WHO IS EDUCATED By ABRAM W. HARRIS Ng O COLLEGE claims that it can give a man either brains or ability. An education is different from a schooling. An education may be acquired by man in travel or in a business pursuit, and he may not attend school at all. On the other hand, a man may have schooling and not be educated. But we do say that the most practical way to educate is to give a schooling and that it be done in the college. A college education is a sifting process. Those who make successes of their college education make it worth the while. FROM THE BACK OF THE NOTEBOOK Ignorance is no longer bliss; it is blisters. The "good fellow" rarely ever turns out to be the Ignorance does a great deal of grinning, but very ¶You can lead a student to college, but you can't When a student makes a show of himself it isn't It takes brains to know; it takes education to ¶ Better have an appetite and nothing to eat than One should try to be above the gutter, but one You can't tell what a student really knows by There is always room at the top, but the steps I prefer the sinner who swears once in a while to Miscellaneous knowledge is of only slight value. When the foot of adversity kicks us and we pick THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL REVIEW VOL. XXXI MARCH 1910 NO. 6 THE MONTH'S REVIEW WHAT EDUCATIONAL PEOPLE ARE DOING AND SAYING If one is to judge by what one hears and sees one comes to the conclusion that the American Schools Direct people, taking them They Do Not Create as they go, expect education to do too much. They seem to have the impression that education will do almost anything that it is a penacea for all ills. Young men hear of other young men who have passed from halls of learning to honorable and lucrative positions; young women hear of other young women who have gone from schools of various kinds into employment that is congenial and that pays well. They have not heard of those who failed, or if they have they have turned a deaf ear to the echo of fail ure. To borrow the thought of President Harris of Northwestern University, to go to school, to seek knowledge, to acquire an education gives to men and women neither brains nor ability. An education is like a woman's beauty, or like life itself-worth much or little, in proportion to one's ability to use it to advantage or disadvantage. The late Sam Jones used to say that the reason more students did not carry away more useful knowledge was because they did not have anything to put it in. This may sound a bit rough, as did all of the Sam Jones philosophy, but it contains a grain of truth. The college makes us neither great nor successful. The most that the college can do is to develop what is already ours, to make us know that we know, to place within our hands some of the tools and teach us their use. The rest of the job depends upon ourselves. When the public understands and appreciates this, there will be fewer disappointments and less criticism of the higher institutions of learning. If one has the fitness and the ability to be an engineer, then the time spent in the engineering department of a university will be time well spent. But if one is without ability, a course in engineering will not make of him a high-grade engineer. There are great engineers, great doctors, lawyers, preachers, dentists, journalists, teach ers, architects, stenographers, musicians, and so on, but it was not the college that made them great. The college did its share. Greatness is a matter of combination-a coördination of training and ability. Every day we see mechanics who possess great natural ability, but who never reach the high positions. This is because they are deficient in the training which the school is able to give. On the other hand we see the college graduate who is denied the position that is ever waiting at the top. This is because he is lacking in ability. The schools that are honest-and all the best schools are honest-do not I claim to do more than that which is here set forth. They are even trying to advise and direct students to the courses toward which their ability naturally leads them. The great difficulty lies in the fact that so many people mistake desire for ability. Then when they fail they and their friends are inclined to place the blame on the college. Hence the criticism. Apropos of what has been said, here is a frank statement recently issued by the Ohio State University: "It is, of course, impossible to train sued by the Ohio State University: unless they possess natural talents for that class of work. In general, these are indicated by a liking for mathematics and the applied sciences of chemistry and physics; also by an interest in the use of tools, in drawing, and in practical construction. Every year many persons who are not naturally fitted to be engineers enter the colleges because they believe that engineering pays. As in every other profession, a man's success depends largely upon his native adaptability to his particular line of work, and it is very seldom that one who has not shown natural inclinations along the lines indicated above makes a capable engineer." With the idea at large that educational institutions can take young men and women and transform them into almost anything, has grown up certain schools that keep the thought alive by displays of announcements of successful graduates. The methods of such schools are dishonest. Knowledge never can be figured as a detriment, but announcements which encourage men and women to prepare for lines of endeavor for which they are unfitted works a positive detriment to the whole collegiate and special school system. And from the failures of students grows much of the criticism, causing suffering to those institutions which should be objects of the highest praise. If there must be criticism, let it be directed at the schools which are misleading a public which seeks fame and riches via a short cut, and not at those institutions which are honestly seeking to honestly direct the young men and women of the country. of To believe the newspaper reports would be to believe that "The Utility of Higher SchoolThe Utility ing" is done in red. Higher Schooling on asbestos. Thus furnished an example of the power of the press to extract large sensation from little that is sensational. The book, off the press last month, was a subject for large discussion in educational circles. Its author is Richard T. Crane of Chicago, who is not unknown to educators. Mr. Crane is a millionaire, a large manufacturer, and a philanthropist. He has made certain investigations, and from these he has formed certain opinions of schools and teachers. These opinions are expressed in language that is vigorous and pointed. But Mr. Crane does not hold in one hand a firebrand and in the other a pen heated to a white heat. The book contains much that seems overdrawn and prejudiced, but a reading of the more than three hundred pages reveals many truthstruths which prominent educators acknowledge and often discuss. fact, Mr. Crane uses the words of university and college presidents and pro once more are we In fessors, graduates, business men and others in an attempt to prove his case. From a reading of the sensational clippings appearing in the newspapers one might draw the inference that Mr. Crane is opposed to education and in favor of ignorance. This would be doing the author of the book a great injustice. As he himself says in his introduction, “I am quite as much in favor of education as most people are, and a great deal more than some who pretend to favor it. The difference between us is that I am in favor of the education that educates, and consequently makes men valuable citizens, rather than the class of men these institutions generally turn out." In other words he draws a distinct line between education and schooling. Mr. Crane is a hearty supporter of education up to the completion of the grammar grades of the public schools. Beyond this point he has definite ideas. Part one of the volume is a revised reprint of the book published first in 1902. In this he quotes Doctor Eliot on his "five-foot shelf of books." Out of this he builds the assumption that if a study of these books "will give any man the essentials of a liberal education," as Doctor Eliot claims, then what is the need of a teacher or of four years at college, since they can give the student no more. In this part of the book Mr. Crane reproduces the lists of questions he sent out to college presidents and professors, graduates, business men and others, and then follows with their replies. Here the whole aim is to discover the efficiency of college graduates that the worth of collegiate training may be fully determined. Mr. Crane is a self-made man, "proud of the job," to use the words. of the Chicago Record-Herald, and so he looks at education with a business man's "dollar" eye and with a business man's consideration of a business proposition. The second part of the book deals with technical and special schooling, and it is from this section that the newspapers have taken their extracts. Here Mr. Crane attempts to show the fallacy of technical schools, and that he regards his attempt as successful we have but to quote his own words: "I believe that I have shown clearly that higher schooling does not make either brains or ability. And as these are the only things that count in any of life's activities, what use can we have for the higher schools? As these schools are not needed they cannot be anything but a curse, as one English writer calls them." Mr. Crane claims that technical and special training does not better fit young men to secure and hold good positions; that the best training is to be had in the shops and factories and where actual work is done. "It is conservative to estimate," says Mr. Crane, "that the expense of higher education to this nation must be at least $100,000,000 a year. And this enormous sum is literally thrown away, much to the injury of the country and its people. "This vast waste of money means blood drawn from the people, blankets taken from their beds, food from their tables, coal from their cellars, clothing from their backs-all in the line of sacrifice on the altar of higher education. "It is high time that the American people realized this, for I believe that if they once become fully aroused on this matter they would take steps to compel the higher educators to go to work and earn an honest living." Mr. Crane delights in contrasting the work of men without technical schooling, including himself, with the work of those trained in the schools. And in all such cases the honors go to the former class. Then occurs the much-quoted statements on the college professors: "If the professors can tell us how to raise corn or build bridges or dig tunnels or run factories or manage stores, then in the name of common sense let us give them a chance to show us |