The Times News

Should fine, high spiritual training have a place in everyday education? I know of one university whose men speak proudly of the fact that not one of their number has ever occupied a cell in a penitentiary. I have known intimately many of the men from that college, and there is just as much difference between them and the men from certain other colleges as between day and night. The leaders in that college make spiritual training an important part of their work. I have not known one of that school's alumni to be anything but a credit to his Alma Mater. I wish I could say as much for certain other colleges and their alumni.

Yes, our American schools are sadly missing the mark in education. All you have to do to realize that fact is to listen with a discriminating mind to the speeches and talks of some of our educational leaders, up and down the line from principals of grammar schools to presidents of universities.

It might seem that the older men should dominate the affairs of a nation; for they have had more experience, they have seen more of life than the rest of the people. But unless they have had sufficient moral training, unless they have been educated and disciplined so that their spiritual faculties have become operative, there is no reason to believe that they will be any more honest and honorable than anybody else.

Graybeards for Lawmakers

There are persons who insist that the men who constitute our legislative bodies, such as the congress of the United States, the state legislatures and the municipal governing boards, should be well-advanced in age, and have independent incomes. In that way, we are told, our law making problems would be worked out by men with mature minds and with personal incomes of sufficient size to free them from the temptations of bribery.

To the foregoing proposal is raised the objection that this would mean class legislation, since most men of independent means may be capitalistically inclined; and that it would be difficult for them to see things from the viewpoint of the welfare of the masses. Every legislative body, we are told, should be a cross section of our society.

Rule upon rule, and law upon law are constantly being advocated and adopted to protect us from the iniquities of our fellows; but somehow or other the security we seek is never obtained.

The trouble is we are trying to get a spiritual result by mechanical means. We can not do that; it has never been done and probably never will be done.

Of course our laws and regulations, imperfectly administered and observed, as they are, have a value. They protect us in a limited way, and save us from conditions that would be worse without them. But no laws we can ever devise will give us security and peace except when and until those laws represent the earnest desire and the cooperation of the public. The prohibition law is a vivid illustration of that fact.

Our only hope of establishing the kind of social order which we want, and which we must have if we are ever to live in reasonable comfort and contentment, is thru the proper education of the individual as to his obligations and responsibilities to his fellows and to himself.

That education should be given through our schools. It is worth infinitely more to the welfare and advancement of the people and of the nation than all the conglomeration of studies through which the pupils of today are required to plod or ramble.

Our entire educational system, I think, is lopsided and off the track. That our school system is failing—as real values are measured—is attested to by the fact that more and more, our men of academic and cultural education are drifting into the crime-life of our nation. As one nationally known warden expressed it, if that trend continues, college alumni associations will have to establish branches in the penitentiaries.

The most highly educated nation has been the world's greatest criminal. Does that prove anything to us? It should prove to us conclusively something that we ought already to know; namely, that proficiency in the sciences, in the arts, and in all things intellectual, has not, of necessity, anything to do with proficiency in things spiritual.

Should fine, high spiritual training have a place in everyday education?