Show COUNSEL TO BOYS BY HORACE GREELEY III lii education no one oue has ever overstated the value the importance of education it supplies lies lles eyes to the blind feet to the lame hands gands to the impotent if a youth were required to choose between an education without wealth and wealth without education he should not hesitate but choose education the father who gives his child a good education and nothing else has richly fl fitted him out for a useful happy life A youth growing up to manhood untaught untrained uneducated is like a ship drifting at random on a boiling sea without rudder sails or anchor the farmer who from weak fondness or sheer infirmity I 1 of purpose allows his son to play truant neglect his lessons and thus thua grow up to manhood in ignorance is that sons worst enemy and the son who disregarding the efforts the frugality the self denial chereb whereby hl his parents aca mca kio klo have provided him an education n generous in proportion to their means regards his studies as burdens imposed on him and seeks to slight his lessons devoting most of his time to frolic and frivolity is 19 alike ungrateful and foolish no one was ever educated too much nor too well whether we regard primarily the general good or his own th the e prevalent and grave mistake concerns not the value of education but its nature and aud scope half our intellectual aspiring boys fancy that to be educated they must go to college when in fact some of our best educated men never spent a day in college while some who were worse qualified for usefulness or happiness have graduated and ganshow can show but not read their diplomas not where you were taught but what is the essential matter academies and colleges have their uses to those who are to be clergymen lawyers or doctors the opportunities they offer are valuable though not indispensable but the great majority of our youth are not needed in professions and can be far more useful elsewhere they can be thus useful though they never open a latin grammar nor darken a college door and this is the truth which I 1 would press home on the apprehension of boys and their parents throughout our country A poor widow who asks me with reference to my first article do you mean that ial if I 1 might borrow the money mone required to carr carry my only son th through col coi college ege I 1 should d not do it yes madam I 1 mean exactly that I 1 mean that the honorable manly sense of independence which your son now feels would be unwisely exchanged for a college education which burdened him with a sense of obligation evermore I 1 mean that when you shall have given your son the best education that can be paid for with the means it has pleased god to give you you have done your whole duty in the premises and may humbly but trustfully look for the divine blessing on the result I 1 mean that the education you can give him while he here hero re mainson mains an inmate of his beloved home subject to all its chastening cha hallowing influences is very likely tode to be of greater value than that he would acquire by spending four years even at harvard or yale was not benjamin franklin aduca bated if not who has ever been look around you and see isyou if you cannot instance several who had bad no more school 1 ing than franklin who like him abandoned daily study for daily labor when 12 to 14 years old yet who have ever since been useful efficient respected spec spee eced ted intelligent if such men as mb shakespeare Shak 1 speare and franklin and lincoln are to be deemed uneducated who need fear to be classed with them how then is a poor boy to acquire the necessary knowledge I 1 answer by diligently improving his opportunities having learned to read in the common schools or at his mothers knee let him thenceforth devote every leisure hour to study and to judicious reading assume that he must give CO 60 hours a week to labor as many to rest and other pers personal oual needs there still remain four hours of each secular day to say nothing of sundays wherein to increase his stock of useful knowledge if his labor be manual and especially ilithe if ibbe prosecuted in the open air and sunshine he will need no other muscular exercise and he may give 24 hours per week to mental enlargement if he will and this after making due allowance for wholesome recreation and for interruptions by bereavement or other misfortune will give him at least hours for study and reading between the age of 11 and that of 21 how many think you are better instructed than any farmers son may be bet who will faithfully devote hours to this end I 1 think few boys who have enjoyed and improved average common school advantages need give many hours thereafter to the more complete mastery of the ordinary branches or sciences therein taught what a youth just fresh from common school needs to acquire n t is an elementary knowledge of mature nature and of natural forces that is of chemistry geology botany etc vo to the acquirement of this knowledge I 1 would postpone in great measure history poetry and literature generally I 1 would fix my attention steadily on the great ireat truths of natural science and keep beep it there until I 1 had made those truths thoroughly my own more than forty years have passed since I 1 left my fathers house to learn the printers art and those years have been full of effort and of trial they have made urgent demands on whatever ability and knowledge I 1 possessed and even even more I 1 have traversed two continents to venice on the east and san francisco on the west and found abundant reason to regret the deficiencies of my youthful education I 1 have been engaged in enterprises and subjected to responsibilities which im operatively ively required the possession of a wide and varied knowledge a ripe and thorough culture yet no other deficiencies of my schoolboy school boy learning have so often confronted me as has my ray inability to read intelligently the history of our earth as it is graven on her rocks buried burled in her soils and printed in living green on her plants plants and forests A bowlder boulder like a teakettle tea kettle dug from a depth of several feet beeton on the summit of a hill where it had lain undisturbed for thousands of years yet washed and worn to the smoothness of a lap stone by ages of rolling and chafing in the surf of some ancient ocean is to me an object of abiding interest and I 1 would richly en enily i oy a geologists life of tramping and I 1 camping mainly in regions new to cIvIll civilized zeu zed man but revealing to instructed eyes the proofs goofs of an antiquity to which china Is la novel and egypt an upstart of yesterday young friends what is best for us is always attainable what is essential is ever near I 1 would dissuade no one from accepting and profiting by the costliest cost liest aids to mental improvement provided they involved no obligation save to parents no incurring of debt I 1 insist only that a bountiful providence has not restricted the blessings of a good education to those who can afford to spend four years at college I 1 hold that any lad of fair capacity and resolute application can educate himself at least up to the standard of anklin franklin Pr or dr lincoln and so qualify himself for a life of eminent usefulness and honor by steadily persistently improving his his opportunities port unities though he should never have nave a days schooling after his fourteenth year and though he be required to labor not only for his own daily bread but for that of a widowed mother and her younger children I 1 exhort you to realize that a good practical education is the birthright of every american youth and that only by your own indolence or dissipation si can you fail fall to secure its ines blessings to yourselves first and tilen tjien t ilen jien to your country |