Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/79

Rh unscientific ways. Since he is manfully buckling down, however, to the problems of real conservation in manufacturing, transporting and selling goods, so must the teacher, also, get down to actualities. For in all industries the chief element to be conserved is the human element; and the teacher is paid by the state to understand, guide and give a right start to his quota of those boys and girls who are to be the producers, distributors and consumers of the coming time. For years and years everybody has been saying that the real work of the schools is to produce good citizens; but no one—broadly speaking—can be a good citizen unless he is an able producer and an intelligent consumer. Education that does not have these ends in view results in dreamers, parasites and social anarchists. Education that does recognize these aims is in line to produce self-reliance, self-respect and social responsibility—the three main bases of sound citizenship.

However high the ideals of all teachers should be, however strongly they should insist upon breadth, culture and "uplift" for their pupils, every one of those noble things of education should be soundly bottomed upon the no less noble demands of self-respecting, intelligent, purposeful winning of the daily bread. What higher and finer goal for all school life than the founding of a family and the rearing and training of the next generation? Yet how absolutely bound up with that true ideal of a civilized state is the ability to earn a living, in ways congenial to the earner and in such an amount that ease of mind, comfort of body and education for the brain and soul shall follow for the worker himself and for those depending on him?

Using the word "business" to cover all the fields of human activity along material lines—the fields of production, distribution and consumption—every boy and girl in every school is going to find his or her chief interests and his or her chief medium for development in the business world. Therefore, every teacher should understand—at least in a broad way—what business is, what it demands, and how those demands are to be met—so far as they can be met—by the school.

Obviously, however, the most zealous of teachers could not acquaint himself intimately with more than one general line of business activity; and it is a serious question whether or not, if he had so trained himself, he wouldn't then be doing the teaching profession a service by leaving it. The teacher must never forsake the teaching point of view—the view that his duty is not to train the boy for business, but to use business as a powerful instrument in training the boy. To do this, however, the teacher must understand not only boys in general, but also business in general. And, however great may be the differences between manufacturing and merchandizing, between banking and baking, there are certain fundamentals characteristic of substantially every branch of that production, distribution and consumption of commodities—noting that consumption, and therefore household management, is put