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The New Education.

COMMENT

Under the title, "For What Kind of Life Shall We Educate?" Dr. Bohm writes:

"Our great misfortune is that we cannot keep two things in mind at once. We must educate for life. Very well. We must teach--the money making, livelihood-earning vocations. Good. But can a man or woman live by broad alone?

"Another misfortune is that when a controversy has taken on a certain form it is impossible for us to get outside the presuppositions of that form. Dr. Flexner says: 'Teach science and practical craftsmanship.' We immediately take for granted that this means no Latin. Straightway the representatives of the classics take the stage as Dr. Flexner's principal opponent.

"The real question raised by Dr. Flexner's proposals is not whether we shall teach Latin but whether we shall teach anything which will give the pupils something beyond the practical as popularly conceived.

"Either a man is much more than a livelihood earner or he might as well be dead. Beyond getting his living a man must live his life. He must be a citizen and a human being.

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"This means, first of all, that he must have some human sense, some insight into his fellow-men and some grasp on all those processes whereby our complex society is carried on. He must know history, politics, economics. He must be sensitive to civic and economic wrong. He must feel the drive of our common life forward toward better institutions and relations.

"And it means, too, that he must have some part in the spiritual commonwealth for which all else is little but a scaffolding. This does not mean that a knowledge of Latin declensions is a natural right. But it does mean that each human being should have some means of expression, some way of inviting his soul. Many different arts and crafts and sports may furnish these means. Any system of education which leaves them out is narrow and pedantic. Such a system must fail just as the so-called classical education has failed.

"Our Puritan forefathers fought one sort of bigotry with another. Let us not imitate them." --New York Sun.

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