Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/828

810 co-operation, too generally prevails among individuals and all kinds of human organizations.

That all education should be industrial, and that everybody should be industrially educated, we believe to be a perfectly tenable proposition. For one to be industrially educated he must be in possession of the following elements:

1. An industrial disposition, which leads to a cheerful and even happy devotion to some chosen employment, as the avenue through which to make his contribution to the world's wealth.

2. Industrial knowledge—such general and special knowledge as will put him in possession of the best human experience in the direction of his chosen vocation.

3. Industrial power—such a development of physical, intellectual, and artistic power as will remove as far as possible the chances of failure, and, by giving a just consciousness of strength, will enable him to work always with the hope, and expectation of success.

Will not all admit that it is at least desirable that such education should become universal?

In the brief time at our disposal, we can scarcely outline the place the public schools should occupy in the development of such a scheme and in the accomplishment of such results.

How can the industrial disposition be fostered? How can industrial knowledge be most economically and efficiently imparted? How can industrial power be developed? How can the different classes of the world's workers be brought into intelligent sympathy?

These are the great questions pressing for solution upon society in general, and upon the teacher in particular. Probably no friend of industrial education would claim that farmers, mechanics, or artisans of any kind, as such, should be fitted for their special work in the public schools, any more than that these schools should undertake the training of physicians, lawyers, painters, sculptors, statesmen. The public schools should rather form the road leading up to the base of the mountain of industry and art, thence branching to the various heights of the special industries, each special height having at its base a special school to fit its students for its climbing.

As all classes of our people are to be citizens of one common republic, popular education must extend sufficiently far to prepare for the one great common industry of citizenship. The power to read, write, and cipher, may be destructive or helpful to good citizenship, according as it is or is not guided by an intelligence suffused with conscientious regard for the rights of all men. This intelligence and regard can be developed only as the work of the schools is based upon a sound platform of principle. We believe this platform can be made so broad, so catholic—that its inherent naturalness and divinity shall be so readily apparent—that men and women, who desire to make united effort for the good of all, can easily stand upon it.