d the
machine shop, the experimental farm, the hospital ward and operating
room, and the practice school, on the other hand, indicates a source of
accurate knowledge with regard to the way in which our teachings really
affect the conduct and adjustment of our pupils that cannot fail within
a short time to serve as the basis for some illuminating principle of
educational values. This, I believe, will be the next great step in the
development of our profession.
There has been no intention in what I have said to minimize the
disadvantages and discouragements under which we are to-day doing our
work. My only plea is for the hopeful and optimistic outlook which, I
maintain, is richly justified by the progress that has already been made
and by the virile character of the forces that are operating in the
present situation.
On the whole, I can see no reason why I should not encourage young men
to enter the service of schoolcraft. I cannot say to them that they will
attain to great wealth, but I can safely promise them that, if they give
to the work of preparation the same attention and time that they would
give to their education and training for medicine or law or engineering,
their services will be in large demand and their rewards not to be
sneered at. Their incomes will not enable them to compete with the
captains of industry, but they will permit as full an enjoyment of the
comforts of life as it is good for any young man to command. But the
ambitious teacher must pay the price to reap these rewards,--the price
of time and energy and labor,--the price that he would have to pay for
success in any other human calling. What I cannot promise him in
education is the opportunity for wide popular adulation, but this, after
all, is a matter of taste. Some men crave it and they should go into
those vocations that will give it to them. Others are better satisfied
with the discriminating recognition and praise of their own
fellow-craftsmen.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: An address before the Oswego, New York, County Council of
Education, March 28, 1908.]
[Footnote 3: It should be added that the movement toward universal
education in Germany owed much to the work of pre-Pestalozzian
reformers,--especially Francke and Basedow.]
[Footnote 4: While the years from 1840 to 1870 mark the period of
intellectual revolution, it should not be inferred that the education of
this period reflected these fundamental changes of outlook. On t
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