Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/537

Rh riot aiming at the application of theories which might or might not hold true. The teaching of 'modern' subjects has not as yet settled into custom similarly guided by the observation of results. The essential difference between the classical and the modern system is the difference between training and teaching. A classical education is practically a training pure and simple: a modern education is a combination of training and teaching with mainly a teaching aim. In the pressure and struggle of life it is undoubtedly to the advantage of young people that they should, when they leave school, not only have the strength and agility which will enable them to use any weapon, but also skill in handling the particular weapons with which they will be called upon to fight. Like most other questions, there is no absolute distinction between the two systems—their difference is a matter of degree. The parent to whom money is of no consequence may allow his sons an indefinite—that is to say, a classical—training in the assurance that they will afterwards get a surer and more intelligent grasp of the subjects upon which will depend their success in the battle of life. He is wise in allowing them to continue their general mental training if he is quite sure that the delay thus caused will not prevent them from making their way to the first fighting rank when they come to the front. Such a delay is not, so far as I can judge, detrimental to success in preparing for the professions. Rather is the delay a good thing in itelfitself [sic], for various more or less indirect reasons which, we need not discuss. But in the case of commercial life the handicap is, I gather, heavily in favor of those who are early in the field. The luxury of a classical education may prove costly, either by delaying the acquisition of business methods, or by causing the novice to hurry over and consequently to scamp the inevitable routine of business training. Every business is based upon knowledge of a specialized kind. It may be little more than bookkeeping, or it may include a considerable acquaintance with various branches of geography, science, modern languages, or other subjects. The successful merchant who is fond of asserting that his sons must begin their work young by 'learning to lick stamps' is thinking of the business machine which he has made, and which will continue to work so long as it is kept well oiled; he is not thinking of new developments, new competition, new needs for adaptation which will give fortunes to those who have brains and take them away from mere office machines. 'Licking stamps' was not the basis and source of the business methods which he himself developed, although he is fond of vaunting it as the open sesame of an ever-swelling banking account. It is a perverse and paradoxical expression of a half-truth; but its enunciation indicates a stupid incapacity of recognizing the causes of success in the past, and a still more stupid inability to recognize the trend of the forces which will make for success in the future.