Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/552

536 "Plato," the student suggested.

"Yes. I ain't got nothin' agin him, you understand, and reckon he may be a pretty clever fellow; but I'll tell you what's a fact. He ain't worth his salt when the grass is in the cotton; so, Dan, jus' grab that hoe hangin' in the tree out there, and scorn the grass, and larn the cotton to look up."

"Great goodness! "the affrighted young man exclaimed,"I can't stand it out there!"

"Oh, but you mustn't pay no attention to the body. The sun won't hurt your soul. Come on, or your grub stops."

The young man sighed, and like the scriptural personage, arose and followed his father. Two hours later a panting and perspiring Platonist wielding a heavy hoe was seen striking at the fox-tail grass.

This story illustrates the superstition and ignorance which have characterized the great mass of mankind regarding educational matters. It is a fact at this day that the vast majority of pupils in attendance at our colleges do not know what they want. It is also a fact that the parents who send them do not know what value their children are to get for the sacrifice made. They have a vague idea that their children are to be "educated," and are accordingly to take their place among the first of the land. This simple conception is carefully coddled at commencements, where the public are congratulated on the fact that they are to be taken under the protecting wing of the "educated" (i. e., the college-bred) man. The common people are elegantly assured that they will be supremely blessed, in some mysterious and unspecified manner, by the presence of "educated" men among them; while at the same time it appears that the "educated" man will have a very nice and agreeable job in taking care of the public. And the amazing superstition that a study of books (and those, too, almost irrespective of the wants of either pupil or public) is education, persists in defiance of all sense and experience.

The same simple faith appears in the making of charitable bequests. No statistics regarding educational endowments are afforded by the census, nor are any at hand, hence the subject can not be presented in its full aspect. But we know that endowments are daily announced in the newspapers. Young men and women are to be hired to study theology by means of fellowships, to look at the stars, to study the languages, and the sciences, or whatever the whim of the "benefactor" happens to be. The climax is reached when, as was lately announced in the London "Times," an immense sum is set aside from the ordinary course of business to aid young men in becoming civil engineers. That education, if valuable, should be paid for like everything else of value; that it should stand on the same footing as all other things, and that its value is best secured by its ability to appeal to the spontaneous desires of the public, and to win its financial support precisely as Booth or Patti or Theodore Thomas win their support—that is to say, by