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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1899)
THE BATTALION. 17 THE KIND OF MEN THE TIMES WANT. HE South needs young men who know how to superin tend and run factories and mills. As the Atlanta Co?istitution says, we we have young men of our own who should be available for this work, but owing to our faulty ideas on education, while they are prepared to be doctors or law yers, they are not prepared to be handlers of coal or iron. Thus we see them standing about with out employment, or clamoring for commissions in the army, while the fat berths with comfortable salaries at home are almost all taken up by stranger. The need of our country, then, is education. “We do not need men who can expound Blackstone,” adds the Co?istitution, “but men who can swing hammers and press electric buttons. If we do not make our facilities for technical educa tion broad enough and thorough enough, we must expect to seethe Massachusetts man sitting in the superintendent’s office while our own sons pass around the water pail.” Noting these conditions at home, the Raleigh Observer says; “In these modern times, while the book or school part of educa tion has been extended and im proved, nothing has been incor porated into the modern system of education to take the place of that practical apprenticeship for plan tation work, and which laid the foundation in physique and mind, not only for the best possible plantation managers, but for statesmen, lawyers and other pro fessional men. “The chief need of the youth of to-day is training in manufac turing pursuits. The school and collegiate education of to-day is all right as far as it goes. The graduate of 21, hewever, is large ly without practical knowledge or tsaining in the lines of the work he wishes to undertake. If the young men of to-day knew as much about spindles, looms and steam engines as the ante-bellum young man knew about mules, cotton growing and the like, there would be ample occupation for them at good pay in the cotton and other factories. Indeed, we are now in a condition where the developing manufactures are con stantly in need of and seeking an educated and practical class of young men, while the country is at the same time full of educated and more or less impractical young fellows hunting positions. Some of these young fellows, re alizing their deficiency , take steps to get the practice and go to work to make themselves capable to do efficient work. These invariably succeed and soon become in due time superintendents, managers and owners. Many of them, how ever, are handicapped for a long time solely for the want of practi cal training or an apprenticeship in the practical end of the work they want to do. In respect to this practical side of education the modern schools are improving all