THE KING’S BUSINESS
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equipping the will. More and more the introduction of the practical marks the progress of modern education. Modern Education Also Involves the Ethical and the Moral. That teacher who disregards this fact is unfit for the office of instruc tor ; and those who neglect it ought to he forcibly removed from positions of authority. But the noblest of our educational leaders do neither. We are fully persuaded that the major ity of the instructors in both prepara tory and advanced schools would con sent with him who said: “The new education adds a fourth ‘R’ to ‘Read ing, ‘Riting’ and ‘Rithmetic,’ namely, ‘Right living.’ ” He meant (at least he ought to have meant) more than mere attention to personal hygiene, proper exercise, wholesome food, etc. He meant righteous living. President Alderman, in defining an educated man, said: “He is,, first of all, one able to behave himself prop erly; 2nd, One able to use language with force and precision; 3rd, One open-minded to ideas; 4th, One able to get what he wants out of books; 5th, One able to observe closely, imag ine vividly and reason accurately; 6th, One able to do some certain work well and cheerfully.” Other defini tions might be given that would easily equal, or surpass, this ; but any true definition of the educated man must give first place to ethical. ideas and moral qualities, even as President Ald erman has done. The Universities of the land are sending forth a verit able army of young men and women. Whether they have done the best for them that could be done by the schools will depend not so much upon the high marks to which they have been incited in class room and exam ination work, nor even so much upon that intellectual training which is looked upon as the chief end of the ed
ucational process, as upon the ethical and moral ideas which have come to those titled young men and women in consequence of their school instruction. Paul, writing to Timothy,, speaks of some who are ‘ever learning, and yet never able to come to a knowledge of the truth”—a text which suggests the second consideration concerning Mod ern Education, namely, Its Masterly Opponents When Paul penned these words to Timothy he put into their context a plain description of Some certain op ponents. The centuries that have rolled between the then and the now have not changed their character; have not even affected their names; for, among others, he speaks of the passion for pleasure; the desire for profit; and the pride of infidelity. The lovers of pleasure are not un known to our century, and are not strangers in the midst of our children; they are not exotics in schools of learning. The truth is, The Passion for Pleasure Is the Peril of the Age. Parents are not exempt, and their children have not escaped. The grapes of Eschol have looked so lus cious that the elders could not let them alone, and the children’s teeth are not so much on edge as sharpened with appetite. It •is not unusual to hear some accomplished mothers com plain of their daughters’ poor stand ing in school; and finely educated fathers criticize the sons for failing of the record existing in the sire’s former example. And yet the whole blame is not with the children of this generation! Those mothers, whose days of education are past, and whose very accomplishments have made them a social place, and who flit from one function to another as butterflies
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