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Show THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE POOR. Our beliefs are governed by our intelligence and our consciences are moulded by our education. Our education, then, should be of a character that would ensure the highest intelligence and the broadest possible general culture. The knowledge of most Americans is exceedingly inaccurate; they know about a vast number of things but do not positively know them. Their education has been made too technical. The main object in securing it is that it may lead to the acquisition of property. Money getting is the curse of the country. It is making servile slaves of its people and narrowing them down to the repulsive rats of avarice. It shuts them out from a view of anything not tinged with gold. It closes their eyes to anything that has not an immediate and daily money value. It blisters their sensibilities and renders callous their finer feelings. It causes them to recognize merit on a money basis, and it matters little if the character be "foul as Vulcan's slithy," a golden fleece concealing all that. The better nature is lost sight of and the devotee falls prone before the golden calf. Affluence is not all of life nor the best part of it. The possession of knowledge is worth more, inasmuch as it contributes to the happiness of our existence. The laboring classes are resting under great responsibility in the matter of the education of their children, in which they should reflect that these same children are capable of receiving the best advantages and of occupying positions in life much more influential than those in which their parents may be placed. They have growing, healthy intellects, as well as the children of the wealthy and are subject to the same ambitious longings for better things. The development of the children will place the parents on a higher plane and add to the happiness of a household. Our high schools are placed in peril in almost every city on account of the opposition of the very class who might be most benefited by them. They falsely reason that their children must go to work and cannot enjoy these advantages hence, since they cannot, the children of the wealthy ought not. The laboring man should sacrifice something to place his children in possession of as high a standard of education as possible for him to receive in the public schools at least, but he will not. The anxiety to get money hurries his boys into the workshop and his girls into the laundries, kitchens or dressmaking shops. To be sure these positions must be filled, but will a young man be any worse mechanic because he has a good education? The more general culture you can give him, the better will he enjoy life, the more esteemed he will be and at the same time the more intelligent mechanic. Parents fear that education is likely to cause their sons to choose lives of idleness or professional lives, in short to make them feel entirely above their station. This is not necessarily true. There are young men, and old ones too, who are daily regretting that they were not taught some useful mechanical calling. It is not a laudable ambition which causes parents to neglect to have their sons learn trades, because they desire them to occupy higher positions. Work of the brain is no less wearying, not less work, ??? Unreadable ??? require, in very many cases, less intelligence. The possession of polite culture increases the chances of the sons and daughters of laboring men and mechanics for social and political preferment. It fits them for the lives of the greatest usefulness and happiness, and improves in every way the tone of our society. Several deplorable follies exist at present to influence people in moderate circumstances from taking full advantage of the educational opportunities presented to them. One of these is the matter of dress. No parents can be called sensible who will deprive their children of what is justly due them, because they may not feel able to clothe them as elegantly as their more opulent neighbors. Here is an evil that stands in the way of the full development of myriads of children. They are withdrawn from school and grow up uncultured from motives of false pride. Every city should be proud of its high school, and all classes should enjoy its benefits to the full, allowing no slight pretext to cause them to lose its advantages. The high school is the taxpayer's college, and should be sustained as the dearest boon to the working classes. Every advantage of advancement in learning should receive the hearty support of all citizens, and instead of throwing barriers in its way, and praying continually for its annihilation, they should heartily second every action that would afford them better educational advantages. - Hawkeye. |