BUSINESS MAN AND HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE 75 



unscientific ways. Since he is manfully buckling down, however, 

 to the problems of real conservation in manufacturing, transporting 

 and selling goods, so must the teacher, also, get down to actualities. 

 For in all industries the chief element to be conserved is the human 

 element; and the teacher is paid by the state to understand, guide and 

 give a right start to his quota of those boys and girls who are to be the 

 producers, distributors and consumers of the coming time. For years 

 and years everybody has been saying that the real work of the schools 

 is to produce good citizens; but no one — broadly speaking — can be a 

 good citizen unless he is an able producer and an intelligent consumer. 

 Education that does not have these ends in view results in dreamers, 

 parasites and social anarchists. Education that does recognize these 

 aims is in line to produce self-reliance, self-respect and social responsi- 

 bility — the three main bases of sound citizenship. 



However high the ideals of all teachers should be, however strongly 

 they should insist upon breadth, culture and " uplift " for their pupils, 

 every one of those noble things of education should be soundly bottomed 

 upon the no less noble demands of self-respecting, intelligent, purpose- 

 ful winning of the daily bread. What higher and finer goal for all 

 school life than the founding of a family and the rearing and training 

 of the next generation? Yet how absolutely bound up with that true 

 ideal of a civilized state is the ability to earn a living, in ways con- 

 genial to the earner and in such an amount that ease of mind, com- 

 fort of body and education for the brain and soul shall follow for the 

 worker himself and for those depending on him ? 



Using the word " business " to cover all the fields of human activity 

 along material lines — the fields of production, distribution and con- 

 sumption — every boy and girl in every school is going to find his or her 

 chief interests and his or her chief medium for development in the 

 business world. Therefore, every teacher should understand — at least 

 in a broad way — what business is, what it demands, and how those 

 demands are to be met — so far as they can be met — by the school. 



Obviously, however, the most zealous of teachers could not acquaint 

 himself intimately with more than one general line of business activity ; 

 and it is a serious question whether or not, if he had so trained himself, 

 he wouldn't then be doing the teaching profession a service by leaving 

 it. The teacher must never forsake the teaching point of view — the 

 view that his duty is not to train the boy for business, but to use busi- 

 ness as a powerful instrument in training the boy. To do this, how- 

 ever, the teacher must understand not only boys in general, but also 

 business in general. And, however great may be the differences between 

 manufacturing and merchandizing, between banking and baking, there 

 are certain fundamentals characteristic of substantially every branch 

 of that production, distribution and consumption of commodities — 

 noting that consumption, and therefore household management, is put 



