[NORTH CAROLINA
journal of Education.
VOL. III.
GREENSBORO, N. C., FEBRUARY, 1900. Number 7.
There is only one cure for public distress — and
that is public education, directed to make men
thoughtful, merciful, and just.
Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — magnanimous
— to be this, is indeed, to be great in life; to be¬
come this increasingly, is, indeed, to advance in
life, in life itself — not the trappings of it.
The first use of education is to enable us to con¬
sult with the wisest and the greatest men in all
points of earnest difficulty. To use books rightly
is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when
our knowledge and power of thought fail; to be
led by them into wider sight, purer conceptions
than our own, and receive from them the united
sentence of judges and councils of all time, against
our solitary and unstable opinions.
We once taught our youth to make Latin verses,
and called them educated; now we teach them
to leap and row, to hit a ball with a bat, and
call them educated. Can they plough, can they
sow, can they plant at the right time, or build with
a steady hand? Is it the effort of their lives to be
chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely
in word and deed?
The educated man ought to know these things:
First, where he is — that is to say, what sort of a
world he has got into; how large it is; what kind
of creatures live in it, and how; what it is made of,
and what may be made of it. Secondly, where he
is going — that is to say, what chances or reports
there are of any other world besides this; what
seems to be the nature of that other world.
Thirdly, what he had best do under the circum¬
stances — that is to say, what kind of faculties he
possesses; what are the present state and wants of
mankind; what is his place in society; and what
are the readiest means in his power of attaining
happiness and diffusing it.
It is of little consequence how many positions of
cities she knows, or how many dates of events, or
how many names of celebrated persons — it is not
the object of education to turn a woman into a dic-
JOHN RUSKIN.
Born February 8, 1819; Died January'20, 1900.
Poet, Artist, Philosopher. Philanthropist,
Seer and Interpreter of the Truth and Beauty of the World.
tionary; but it is deeply necessary that she should
be taught to enter with all her personality into the
history she reads; to picture the passages of it
vitally in her own bright imagination; to appre¬
hend, with fine instincts, the pathetic circumstances
and dramatic relations, which the historian too
often eclipses by his reasonings, and disconnects
by his arrangement; it is for her to trace the equi¬
ties of divine reward, and catch sight, through the
darkness, of the fateful threads of woven fire that
connect error with its retribution. But, chiefly of
all, she is to be taught to extend the limits of her
sympathy with respect to that history which is
being forever determined as the moments pass in
which she draws her peaceful breath; and to the
contemporary calamity which, were it but rightly
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter.
