Hobart Senior High School - Memories Yearbook (Hobart, IN)

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A T mental profession than to fit him to earn the bread of sweet life by the sweat of honest toil. Whenever a school creates or intensifies a dislike for manual, me- chanical, industrial, commercial, or agricultural labor it becomes a public menace. I’ve seen somewhat of the pomp and glory of the world; seen every crowned head in Europe, visited every country, city and capitol, had audience with the king of Italy and two popes of Rome, been enter- tained in the palaces of the nobility, among them Prince Paoli Ruspoli, hereditary lord mayor of Rome and richest subject of the Italian crown, as a guest tasted the sweets of plutocratic wealth, am myself not wholly unknown in the world of public speech and the Republic of Letters, and I deliberately declare I would rather my only child, a lad of eight sum- mers, would become a farmer, mechanic, merchant, manufacturer, or railroad builder, especially farmer, than to become an ambassador, sec- retary of state, or president. The High School course of to-day is more extensive and intensive than were the courses of Harvard and the University of Virginia in the days of Washington, Jefferson, the Adamses, and Alexander Ham- ilton— as late as Wendell Phillips, Emerson, Holmes, Bryant, Lowell and Longfellow. The world has had three distinct educational epochs: 1. When education was regarded as being fit only for menials. The man of honor and renown was an achiever, not a scholar, a doer not a thinker; anybody could become a scholar, but only a hero, a god, could strike down tyrants, sack cities, conquer countries, build empires, rule the world. Many of the apotheosized heroes in the World’s pantheon were unable to read or write — they had slaves or cheap sec- retaries read and write for them. 2. When, conditions reversed, learning became the fad of royalty, nobility, plutocracy — the cycle of university-founding by crowned heads and governments. The democracy was doomed to ignorance, and royalty, nobility and plutocracy seized the spoils of learning and litera- ture. Then, and then only, the school curriculum was made classical and artistic, ornamental, artificial, to suit the taste of royalty, nobility and plutocracy, and qualify them, not to become producers, makers of honest livings, but to embroider their idleness with elegance, to adorn the salon, shine in the ballroom and at the daily fete, or dazzle on a throne. 3. The present, marked by a widespread dissatisfaction with both the High School and the College curricula. The root of the matter is: Washington and the New England pilgrims and puritans with their Anglomania, and the Jeffersons and Madisons and Monroes with their Francomania, secured the adoption here of the Old World dilletante, leisure class, ornamental school curriculum which, in our non-leisure class, non-dilletante, non-ornamental, gnarl-fisted, horny-handed, work- 16

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THE IDEAL AND THE GOAL. By John Merritte Driver. Written expressly for “Aurora.” HEN William Allen White, to the New York editor’s “What’s the matter with Kansas?” replied: “Kansas raises too much hell and too few cattle,” the Nation roared with laughter, esteeming it a fine bit of Americanesque humor. So to the question “What’s the matter with the American Pub- lic School I” the answer is: It’s educating too much cityward, society- ward, professionward, and too little farmward, artisanward, business- ward, creating too many consumers and too few producers, too many “ladies” and “gentlemen” and too few mothers of civilization and fathers of kingdoms and empires, too many who “toil not, neither do they spin” and too few who sow and reap and gather into barns, too many male and female parasites and too few who daily add, heroically and with infinite toil and sacrifice, to the sum total of the World’s virtue and wealth and wisdom and well-being and happiness. Our increasing weakness as a Nation is: Passion for prodigality and repugnance to productive labor, loafing instead of laboring, making believe instead of actually being all we profess to be and achieving more and more. Too often do we say to the boy: “Study hard, for, however poor, you may become President of the United States,” and too rarely, if ever: “Study hard, learn a trade, cultivate industry, practice rigid economy of both time and money, glory in hard work, for thus you will always be able to maintain your self-respect, render valiant service as a patriotic citizen, and make an honest living, and — ‘an honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ ” We’ve been too intent upon making lawyers and doctors and pro- moters and too little intent upon making farmers and ditchdiggers and hodcarriers and mechanics and foresters and civil and electrical engi- neers and railroad builders and captains of industry. We’ve been more eager to send the High School graduate, regardless of his ability, aptitudes and natural inclinations, to college and univer- sity than we have been to send him to the farm and bench and forge, the industrial beehive, train of cars or fleet of ships, mill or mine or mart of trade; hence the enquiry: “Are all educated men, especially college men, failures at the practical affairs of life?” We have been more eager to fit the High School graduate for college and an easy orna- 15

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Q 0 u 0 aday, hundred-cents-on-the-dollar democracy is, in some measure, a mis- fit. Were we a people who regarded manual labor and self-support a disgrace our curriculum would be ideal; but since we regard the non- laborer, the non-producer, a pest and a parasite, and since we buy edu- cation not for ornament, but to become better and more successful bread-winners, and home-makers, and citizens, practical and intelligent members of the body politic and of the body-cosmic, the taxpayer often feels lie’s defrauded and, consequently, is angry. The teacher’s task to-day is not unlike the turning back of Niagara — the most herculean task in the world. How to fit his wards to do unpoetical, unromantic, but absol utely indispensable handwork and headwork and inspire them with a passionate love of it and a sense of its glorious dignity in a community that is leisure-smitten and money- mad and rank-and-ti tie-mad— -in short, fit his wards to make an honest living by honest toil, to become producers and not parasites, to glory in thrift, industry, productivity— is the supreme problem of the hour. Maltlius taught that the earth is too poor to support its population —is overstocked. He was mistaken; the earth is rich to opulency. We’ve scarce begun to tap earth’s inexhaustible resources. The prob- lem is: How to train the rising generation to lay to and avail them- selves of earth’s riches in oil, soil, steel, lead, iron, tin, copper, zinc, metals and minerals, timber and waterpower; to betake themselves to farming, mining, merchandising, manufacturing, teaching, the army and the navy, the indispensable trades requiring skill and others requir- ing technical training and yet others in the domain of science, phar- macy, electrical engineering, etc.; to revere and hallow all honest toil and toilers; to extol honest hardworking poverty and to scorn dis- honest or extortionate wealth; to uncover before and “All hail” the producer and to blast with withering opprobrium the parasite. How to humanize and democratize our Public School and College education and turn it into the great gulf-stream of our practical, pas- sionate, debt-hating, loafer-loathing, labor-demanding, agricultural, in- dustrial and commercial daily life, making every sane, able-bodied citi- zen self-sustaining, helpful to others, devoted to his country and its insti- tutions, loyal to his Maker — broadly and fundamentally patriotic and religious; what a work! The end and aim of all education, vocational no less than cultural, is character, but there’s no stable, praiseworthy character apart from self-denial, self-sacrifice, and service; and the greater the service ren- dered, requiring sorest labor, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, the more noble and exalted the character acquired. The Mechanic of Nazareth is the supreme Example. Nor will the ardent, eager, scholarly, patriotic, devout teachers in oui American Public Schools fall short of their heroic, nerve-racking, sometimes heart-breaking, but all glorious task; to fit and fuse all that is ideal in the old curricula and methods of the past to and with the 17 r fJ Q a Q 7=