Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/390

384 The habit of thus associating the richness of history, romance and science with one's daily work is found in some men, and is a source in them not only of technical efficiency, but of strength and joy. How little is such genuine liberalism fostered by the aristocratic conception of culture as a means of occupying leisure, or by our actual practise of dissociating the study of history, literature and philosophy from the common tasks of to-day! Perhaps the remedy lies partly in the introduction of industrial training into our schools, perhaps in the more common employment of teachers who have worked in shop and factory and office.

The third way in which under present conditions the liberal in education stands opposed to the technical, is in the recognition of individuality, the right of each individual to "yield," in Emerson's words, "that peculiar fruit which he was created to bear." In place of each man adjusting himself to his environment, which, technically speaking, means the present or anticipated demands of the buyer, Emerson invites the individual to "plant himself indomitably upon his instincts and there abide," for the huge world will come round to him. However exaggerated the language, the conception is fundamentally the liberal conception, viz., that the end of all our activities is nothing but the bringing to flower and fruit the highest perfection of which each man is capable. Whereas the technical view at present is to look on the individual as part of the machinery by which the "world's work" is done, that is, service is rendered for which people can be got to pay, the liberal view is to insist that the world's work is the cultivation of the garden of human life, and the best service a man can render is to offer the world the finest fruits of his own personality. Liberalism bids the man take counsel of his own spirit rather than of the market, and prophesies that in maintaining his stand in the face of the world he will gain a deeper insight of the essential harmony between himself and it, while lifting life to a higher scale of intensity and idealism.

By thus starting from the simplest possible conception of liberal education, as education for freedom, for the realization of personality, we escape from a narrow tradition, and from a false antithesis to industrial ardor and efficiency, and are left free to judge for ourselves wherein under present conditions true personality consists, to note without prejudice what evils the technical emphasis in education actually tends to nourish, and to devise under constantly changing conditions new ways for the protection and furthering of the liberal ideal. Clearly the defense of the liberal in education is not merely a matter of insisting on certain courses of study traditionally styled liberal; but, if I have correctly analyzed the situation, it is to cherish certain ideals and to train in certain habits, viz., in the evaluation of one's conduct in terms of its effect upon character, in the appreciation of the interest