John H. Worst

“ For there is no honest work a gentleman may not do. Work elevates a man. It perpetuates the manhood he inherited, which was built up by labor and thought in the flesh and blood of his ancestors. The necessity for labor, therefore is heaven's blessing and to repudiate it is to invite physical and mental decay.
Liberal education should take a far wider range than has ever been assigned to it and exert an influence affecting matter as well as mind. It has a double mission, that of facilitating earning power to provide for physical comforts and also to prepare them to live. ”

“ Since it is a matter of common observation that wealth is easily dissipated, especially when inherited, farseeing parents prefer an education for their children that is adapted to some useful end rather than the education that is largely ornamental or fashionable.
The vicissitudes of life are many. Fortune is fickle and but few young people can hope to command perpetual leisure even should their bad judgment make such a thing desirable. There can never be real independence of thought and action apart from one's conscious ability to cope with others on equal terms in any human emergency. ”

“ I believe we shall see the day when boys and girls who are in the common school together; without damage, can be co-educated in all other grades of school life. The farmer will then not have a separate and specific college for agriculture, while the rest have one for 'mental culture;' nor will college boys in those days be ashamed to look ahead to farming as a profession. There is no occupation that requires so much wit and educated tact, and so much positive knowledge as farming. ”

“ Some of the foremost educators of the day admit that the study of the sciences possess as much disciplinary value as that of the ancient languages, and the information obtained, even though incidental to the culture sought after is of inestimable value in the practical affairs of life. The fact that but few instructors are prepared to teach the sciences as creditably as they are to teach the ancient languages, does not weaken the claims set up for scientific education. ”

“ He goes back to the ape when his hands have to be cased in gloves and his brain is ashamed of decent labor. In these school-gardens botany will be applied to horticulture. In the shops our boys and girls will learn to create things. The trouble with education now is that it divorces knowledge from work—the brains from the hands. In the twentieth century the glory of American education will also be a thorough knowledge of economics, civics and history, applied to good citizenship. Colleges will surely be a part of the common school system, and just as full of modern life. ”

“ The seeds of prejudice against rural life and manual labor are often scattered in the country schools by teachers innocently imbued with the "ideal condition." The fascinations and allurements of the city readily impress themselves upon the youthful mind, and the fact that facilities for liberal education were not offered for the relief of the toiling millions, unless to transform them into a different social element, naturally turned the eyes of those who were able to obtain a liberal education toward the cities. ”

“ The needs of culture cannot be satisfied by mere discipline any more than they can be satisfied by merely utilitarian subjects. But where the training is essentially practical and directly helpful in discharging the highest of all human duties, that of providing the necessaries of life, while at the same time affording abundant opportunity for the study of the language and literature of our own race, the blending thus of cultural and practical training should possess a clientage immeasurably larger, because more useful, than where only the purely cultural is sought. ”

“ The world is strewn with the wrecks of men who inherited fortunes before they had developed the mental poise or business experience necessary to estimate money at its true value. If they had earned their money by honest effort they would not have fallen into habits that led to unbridled extravagance and ultimate disgrace. The inheritance of unearned wealth quite frequently proves a curse rather than a blessing. ”

“ European countries abound in sad memories of wasted soil fertility and forest destruction. Slowly but surely they are rebuilding and rehabilitating worn out tracts at tremendous expense. The ruin which ignorance accomplished with alacrity, education is slowly and painfully undoing. Americans should heed the lessons of history and profit by the mistakes of other countries. The production of food, clothing and other necessaries of life which is of vital importance to a nation, cannot, with safety, be left to blind forces or to revered but ignorant traditions. ”

“ For to balance educational forces and more nearly to, equalize educational opportunities can only result in improvement. Equilibrium of intelligence tends to unify and harmonize American interests and to strengthen patriotism. And should liberal scientific education thus extend its beneficence to all conditions of men, especially to those hitherto unprovided with facilities for preparation for their vocations, we can at least endure the innovation, for it does not aim at the impairment of educational opportunities so long maintained for students able or desirous to take classical training. ”

“ That increasing acquaintance with the laws of phenomenon which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common laborer comforts which a few centuries ago, kings could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge—that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners ”

“ God never intended, however, that parents should provide a property inheritance for their children that will deprive them of the natural advantages which reasonable labor and its restraining influence afford both body and mind. Parental drudgery and self-denial for the purpose of relieving children from the necessity of wholesome effort is mistaken generosity. It makes parent and child alike fall short of the high purposes for which life is given. For life is intended for more important purposes than mere money-getting or the pursuit of objects from which man is utterly divorced at death. ”

“ In this busy world there is honest work for every man to perform. Civilization has multiplied human wants and also developed the ingenuity necessary to gratify them. But it requires labor. Not such, however, as was performed by the slave, but skilled labor—labor where the hand is guided by an intellect, quickened by the agency of class-room and laboratory for the task assigned; labor, such as will reflect credit upon and elevate a gentleman. ”

“ The experiment of self-government will have to withstand severer strains in the future than in the past unless our education is as democratic as our politics. The educational energies of the nation must be so diffused as to uplift all classes, reducing to the smallest possible minimum the army of unskilled workmen. Through skill and training, labor must become pleasure. ”

“ Mere scholarship—book-learning—is seldom effective in the solution of intricate national and economic problems. For profound judgment and constructive ability, such as frequently become imperative in great crises are qualities which are not evolved through classical investigations. They are born rather of experience and contact with the rugged every day affairs of life. To exert a guiding influence in the affairs of state one must feel the throb of living forces and come in touch with the great heart of humanity. ”

“ The government's remedy is not prohibitive legislation, but what should have been afforded without direct government interference—a liberal education with a direct bearing upon agriculture and the mechanic arts for those who naturally desire to fit themselves for such pursuits; to place the farmer and the artisan upon an intellectual and social plane that will attract rather than repel those who would develop the country's resources. ”

“ For many years progressive educators have been striving against the culture-alone theory and advocating the education of the whole man—hand as well as head, body as well as mind. As a result the ancient educational structure is pretty well broken down, and the erstwhile curriculum has become a reminiscence. ”

“ Many wealthy parents still educate their children for the larger pleasure which they believe education of the old type will afford them in life, but parents generally have come to look upon life as a period of intense activity rather than a brief round of pleasure, and hence provide an education for their children that will fit them for the every day demands that duty or necessity may make upon them. ”

“ A liberal and general diffusion of scientific information among agriculturists alone can augment the productive power of the soil and at the same time conserve its fertility for the support of future generations. ”

“ Every man owes a duty to God, to his country, to his family and to himself. To discharge these obligations honestly, fearlessly and with credit should be his earnest purpose. No ambition should be entertained that does not embrace these fundamental duties and no career should be considered worthy that even underrates their sanctity. ”

“ In a republic where every able bodied citizen is an equal factor and where one is possessed of mutual privileges and obligations, society demands that each shall do his part. To be consistent society also should afford equal educational facilities for all; facilities having as direct bearing upon vocation as upon profession, and for those desiring it, an educational training as liberal for manual pursuits as is required for law, medicine or theology. ”

“ We should strive so to conserve the natural resources of the nation that with six or seven times our present population there will be no abridgment of opportunity to make a living and to fulfill the purpose for which life was created. ”

“ Provision must be made for thorough training that will direct the labor which produces the fruits of the earth. Thus to broaden the scope of liberal education it must be divested of all aristocratic limitations and rendered sufficiently democratic to meet the wants of the sons of toil. ”

“ For it is a singular fact that science had quite as much to do with ridding agriculture and the manufacture of commodities of debilitating superstitions that not only retarded progress but were positively injurious to both man and material, as it had to do with the introduction of rational ideas. The rapid increase of the world's population and the very general occupancy of arable lands throughout the world, presupposes that the maximum of food production will soon be reached. ”

“ To live is man's first duty; to live well his privilege. But the world has its severe as well as delightful aspects. The divine law which commands man to subdue and replenish the earth is not less mandatory than that other law which commands him to "lay up treasure in heaven." ”

“ Poor indeed must be the soul if, at death, it must part from all it loved in life. But this frenzy of excitement in which parents live in order that their children may be heirs leaves no time for the consideration of higher and better things. ”

“ The question is no longer asked by practical men "what does a man know" but "what can he do?" Knowing and doing have thus become so intimately associated by common consent as to be inseparable; for knowing without doing is indolence and doing without knowing is waste of energy. ”

“ Not how to live in the material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem which comprehends every special problem is—the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances. ”

“ At the same time no effort should be made, for the sake of patronage or for institutional advantage to influence a student from the calling his heart honestly indicates as the one for which natural taste and native ability, quickened by educational training, fits him. The thing to be avoided, rather, is the inculcation of prejudice against useful vocations and desirable pursuits as being undignified and consequently beneath the notice or ambition of a gentleman. ”

“ The fact that men occasionally become prominent in business, social and political affairs by subordinating conscience and character to position or gain should not swerve a young man from the strict path of rectitude. Victories won by strategy or injustice, whether in business or politics, seldom remain permanent and never afford substantial enjoyment. Society has but little use for the man who wears a mask. ”

“ But we may hope for better things. We may, some of us, live even to see liberal education divest herself of exclusive restrictions and eighteenth century idealism and walk hand in hand with twentieth century progress ”

“ Institutional rivalry also does its share, sending out alluring advertisements and thus filling the college classes with recruits from the farms and from the homes of labor with candidates for positions in life of greater respectability than their parents were able to enjoy. ”

“ The standard of manhood must advance to meet the new conditions and the tremendous responsibilities of the century we have entered upon. Within the present boundaries of the United States there exists the requisite area, soil fertility and other resources sufficient to support a government of five hundred million people. ”

“ The ancient classics as taught in high schools are of but little cultural value. Not one student in a hundred reaches the degree of attainment that presupposes a positive benefit. If the time were devoted to acquiring a more thorough understanding of our mother tongue it would be more creditable. To give time to translating good Latin into poor English is paying an extravagant homage to a fetish. Training in the ancient languages must be long-continued and far-reaching, or it seems to be of little value. ”