Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/250

238 close inspection of those industries in which the mass of a country's population is engaged, and in which their knowledge is displayed by the fruits of their labor, it will be found that the national system of popular education in the United States fails entirely in accomplishing its mission, in several important particulars. For example, in the public schools our youth are, as a rule, entirely untaught in even the rudiments of industrial occupations, and upon passing from the schoolroom are generally utterly incompetent, unassisted, to earn a livelihood in any trade or pursuit requiring manual dexterity. Even our high-schools leave their graduates to drift, by accident or unintelligent direction, into vocations generally foreign to their abilities, and, as a rule, with few exceptions, unequipped with that character of knowledge or expertness without which a comfortable living becomes difficult—prominence impossible. It is commonly accepted as a fact that a good elementary education, such as is afforded by our public-school system, gives a child that which will carry it well along in life; but this is true only of agricultural, or at most of sparsely settled districts, and is then true only within limitations. The tendency of the system is by elevating pupils above their actual or probable stations in life, and prompting in them desires and aspirations of which there is little chance of fruition—to turn out a large class of consumers, who fail utterly of success in the professions and kindred occupations, under conditions which, had their efforts been directed to mechanical or other industrial pursuits, would have made them efficient producers. A remarkably small percentage of our public-school graduates in the Middle and in the Southern States engage in any kind of manual labor.

Recognition of this lack of utility in our educational system has, of late years, become quite general, resulting in efforts to ingraft upon our higher-grade institutions industrial and scientific instruction, and the colleges and schools whose curricula embrace those subjects which fit our boys and girls to participate in the practical work of life are now rapidly increasing. There have long existed in the United States a certain number of educational institutions wherein special attention is given to technical and scientific training in mining, civil and mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences, which are fully equal to the best of similar schools in Europe. Among the most prominent of these are the School of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts of Cornell University, the School of Mines of Columbia College (New York), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Lawrence School of Science in connection with Harvard University, the Pardee Schools, the Stevens Institute at Hoboken, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Sheffield School at Yale; but the high tuition fees charged by these and similar schools make instruction therein available only for the wealthier classes. Elementary science is also now taught in numerous colleges, academies, and high-schools. But, while this instruction, in point of cost and preliminary