West Virginia Wesleyan College - Murmurmontis Yearbook (Buckhannon, WV)

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Ol)eTEttd ofTEducation OUR interest in education increases as its utility and necessity become more clearly recognized. In the progress of civilization there is a continual transference of things from the list of luxuries to the list of necessities. Educa- tion has thus passed from the list of luxuries, where it had remained so long, to a permanent place among the necessities of life. This has been done not merely as an act of benevolence or of culture ; the motive, on the part of the state, is protection and self-preservation ; on the part of individuals, the thought of utility rather than culture has become dominant. Education has become to many, a means to an end; many professions can be entered only through its door. So important is the education of the child that our states provide schools free for all children, maintaining an army of four hundred thousand teachers, and pouring into the cause of education her treasures by the hundreds of millions. Nor does the state stop with the common school ; realizing that her interests are best served by citizens whose education is of the higher order, the state is more and more providing for her youth the college and the university. In this respect, too, private enterprise has excelled the state. Not only does the state provide facilities for teaching, but demands that the child shall attend the school. The state cannot afford to allow her citizens to grow up in ignorance and illiteracy. ' Ignorance is subversive of freedom. The great bulwark of our free institutions is an intelligent citizenship ; upon no other basis can our government of political and religious libertv be maintained. European countries are also alive to the importance of education. England is putting forth an earnest effort to have every child taught in schools of the lower grade at least, and has been remodeling her school system with that object in view. Germany, long since, has provided the common school for all her children, and compelled attendance to such a degree that illiterary is practically unknown. France has a school system probably the most perfect in all the

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world. Not only are the elementary schools open to all children, but the higher schools as well. Tuition and books are free to the student and in many cases room and board as well. That education is at the basis of national greatness is patent by a comparison of Russia with her intellectual neighbors. Competition has become sharp and business methods so complex that a high degree of training is essential to success in the business world ; thus the college is being patronized not only by the professional man, but by the business man as well. This fact verifies the saying of Franklin, An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. The practical turn given to education in recent years has already been suggested. The old college course is being supplanted by studies of practical utility. Science is supreme. Under sway of science, the old methods of doing things have been superseded by modern methods. Our civilization has been revolutionized. We live in a world very different from that in which our grandfathers lived and toiled. The shackles have been taken from human slaves, but the forces of nature have been enslaved for service. Steam and electricity render a service far beyond the power of the whole negro race. The utilization of these mighty forces of nature reveals the greatness of the human intellect, and proves the truth of the old adage, knowledge is power. If any indictment is to be brought against our civilization today, it is not because utilities may be lacking either in quality or quantity ; it is not so much for want of genuineness in products as for want of genuineness in character. The thing of most vital importance is not so much the quality of the goods produced, as it is the quality of men produced. Our supreme interest is not the manufactured goods, but. as Ruskin puts it. the manufacture of souls. The same query may be raised concerning the products of our educational institutions. Does our system of education turn out doctors or lawyers, rather than men? Does the skill of our educational product surpass its manhood 5 If any criticism is to be passed upon our present system of education, it is that