AN ADDRESS

BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY.

BY

JOHN MERLE COULTER,

PRESIDENT-ELECT.

INDIANAPOLIS: CARLON & HOLLENBECK, PRINTERS. 1891.

PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

To one who has had no experience, education may seem the simplest sort of thing. But it is one of the most complex problems we are called upon to solve, being not a whit behind that apparently unsolvable problem, free trade and protection. Those who have had much experience in this thing of education are very apt to have certain views of which the public in general do not approve. A superficial view may lead to one conclusion, and a careful dissection to a very different one. The trouble is that many have the superficial view, and the few do the dissecting. As teachers, we would count it a long step in advance if the public could only be brought to accept our conclusions. As it is, we are sometimes compelled to compromise between what we feel is right and public clamor. We may be driven to put into our courses of study things which are only "sops" thrown to public demand, and then must try to stealthily infuse into them as much of educational value as possible.

In these days, and in this land of haste and sham, of wretched preparation, and foundations laid in sand, it is profitable frequently to consider what we are doing. I know of no subject more misunderstood, not only by the public, but also by those supposed to stand as its representatives, than this one of education. In this country, whose very watchword is its system of education, there is grave danger of the system supplanting the education. In these latter days we have a new catch phrase, “practical education." What monstrous shams have masqueraded behind this phrase! It implies that much that is called education to-day, that all that was called education formerly, is impractical education. My claim is that the phrase "practical education" is tautological, and that "impractical education" is contradictory.

There is but one life to live, and that a short one. But a few

years of it can be devoted to what is called "getting an education," and they never can be duplicated. The training received at this most impressionable period has such a directing influence upon one's life, that it is commonly said to mold the character. Such are the facts which make this thing of education so tremendously. important to a youth and his advisers. It is a question of such far-reaching influence, so unalterable in its results, that it should never be considered carelessly, nor decided hastily. The choice of an education, like the choice of a wife or husband, is “for better or worse."

I take it for granted that we have all discovered education to be a most desirable thing, a thing worth struggling for, a thing which brings in its hands not only enlarged usefulness, that noblest of gifts, but also enlarged happiness. The oft quoted "ignorance is bliss" is an outrage upon beings endowed, as we are, with that "delirious yet divine desire to know." We are all far enough advanced to have gained that more commanding outlook, from which we can see, to some extent, the exceeding beauty of knowledge, can catch in some way the faint outlines of her fair proportions, and are longing for a nearer, clearer view. From such a stand. point, far above that low-ground question, "does an education pay ?" would I consider our theme.

But, one question taken for granted leads us into the presence of another, which has been given manifold and most perplexing answers," what sort of an education is best?" In the attempt to answer this question is to be found all the educative activity of this wonderful age. Systems of all sorts present themselves to the inquiring public, all defended by stout champions, and possessing all degrees of merit, from those that are wise and prudent to those that are characterized by wildness and unmitigated folly. Never was there an ailment so provided for with patent medicines as this We have, in these latter days of grading and bridging and tunneling, even the wonderful discovery of a "short cut," or royal road to knowledge, so royal that the happy, unworn traveler is not only brought into the possession of an education, but himself becomes transformed into a "teacher among men." Indeed, we seem to have come to the dawn of that day when a man is to be able to lift himself by the aid of his own boot-straps. I remember reading in some old numbers of Harper's Magazine a fancy sketch of the con

one.

dition of the world in the year 2,000 or 3,000 A. D., and among other wonderful inventions was mentioned the very one I have spoken of. That is, the idea is the same. The details differ a little, as, for instance, in the one case you were to sit for six months or a year under a bell-jar, subjected to a particular light, and stimulated by a particular food, until the proper bumps developed; while, in the other, you spend the same length of time, or a little less, in a school-room, the other items remaining the same. Another important difference is that the former has a scientific basis, while the latter has none.

But the catch-phrase is the one already mentioned, "practical education," for it captivates the plain every-day business sense of this most practical age, the age of "self-made men." A "self-made man" is of necessity a failure; but a man of intelligence, with such teachers as Nature all about him, experience, the hardest of taskmasters, God speaking through his conscience and in his word, all directing him under the lash of an unquenchable longing for something better-such a man is educated; perhaps not in the formulæ of the schools, which are but as husks, the outward trappings, but in that development of mental muscle which gives him an iron grip upon affairs, he is every inch an educated man.

But "practical education" is now the thing. The days of sentiment, of romance, of impracticable notions, are past, and that most unsentimental thing, science, has induced people to ask those dreadful questions, "What is it for ?" "What good will it do?" "Can we make any use of it?" As well reason with the wind and argue with the whirlwind as attempt to prove anything to persons who could ask such questions. In these days, every study pursued is looked upon like so much real estate, that can be sold or mortgaged as occasion may demand; that something can be made out of it, and this something, freely translated, means money.

What is the popular definition of "practical education?" It seems to be for a man to study the very things he proposes to do in life; that is, it amounts to serving an apprenticeship to a trade. If he means to be a farmer, let him study agriculture; if a merchant, let him study book-keeping; if an engineer, surveying, etc. "Everything else will be so much wasted time," is the corollary to the definition. As if to add sure proof of this, it is usually triumphantly asked, "To what use can one put this, that, or the other