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"Because I am in it," said the sage.

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How about that one?" continued the tyrant, pointing to the place the philosopher had previously occupied. "That was the seat of honor when I filled it."

Where the Macgregors sit is the head of the table. You can not ruffle their serenity. You seek to frighten them with arrow stories. "We'll fight in the shade," they answer. Henley sings their pean:

"Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance

My heart is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet, the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate

I am the captain of my soul.”

66

It is useless to attack such fellows. You shoot their flag away and ask "Have you struck?" Struck? Why, no, we haven't begun to fight yet." "I'm the luckiest man in the world," a Chicago teacher once said. "Broke my arm instead of my leg; the same doctor knew how to operate on my ear; and I have the asthma only in the summer when there isn't any school."

There is a bracing bit of verse in the trophy room at Cornell University written by a young fellow named Corlie.

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"The harder you're thrown, why, the higher you bounce.
Be proud of your blackened eye.

It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,

It's how did you fight and why?"

I have heard, again and again, schoolmen in trouble seek to condemn their critics on the ground that by making the schoolman unhappy the antagonists had impaired his efficiency and deprived the children of the best teaching. Even altho one dictionary definition of happiness makes it the end sought by the activities of our life, we can not bring ourselves to beg our persecutors to desist because they are making us unhappy. That must seem a childish plea. Better the old Aurelian doctrine that happiness doesn't matter much. Stoicism, discredited by our civilization for other causes than unsuitability as a guide of life, possesses the recipes for manhood much needed by the harassed teacher. Let him remind himself that happiness is a state of mind within his control, that worry is a vice of a weak will, is as evil as gambling, licentiousness, and drunkenness, and that the main question to decide right is whether he has played the man. Here is a sailor's prayer to Neptune quoted by Montaigne from some old book:

"O God, thou mayst save me; if thou wilt, thou mayst destroy me; but I will hold my rudder true."

And here is another petition of a Scottish divine,

"Laird, gie us mony braw enemies and the pooer to enjoy them michtily, a' for thine ain great glory."

WILLIAM MCANDREW

WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL

NEW YORK

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III

COMMERCIAL BRANCHES IN THE HIGH
SCHOOL CURRICULUM '

It is a matter of statistics that no more than five per cent. of all the pupils entering the public schools of the country reach the high school, and of those who do, 3-5 leave school at or before the end of the high school course; 2-5 going on to the college or university. Of the pupils who go no further than the high school, it may be inferred that they are to enter business to become clerks, stenographers, bookkeepers, and by promotion, managers, partners, proprietors in business enterprises. The boy who is to take up a trade or to enter any other manual occupation must begin his apprenticeship at or before the high school age.

The high school has, therefore, two functions: one to fit a certain number of young people, educationally speaking, for the active duties of life; the other, to prepare a certain number of other young people for further education in the college or the university. The two classes of pupils stand in numbers as three to two.

The college preparatory function of the high school has been recognized from the first and is well cared for; the colleges see to that. The development of the commercial side of the high school's work, which is a recognition of the claims of the prospective young business man on the attention of the high school, is of more recent growth. It is, however, developing very rapidly. There are today 91 public high schools in the state of California which offer instruction in commercial branches.

As in the case of most new things, there is apparent a tendency to overwork the commercial idea, to give undue weight

A paper read before the High School Section of the California State Teachers Association, San Jose, California, December, 1908.

and importance to commercial subjects, to make of the commercial branches a separate course, to set them over against the classical or college preparatory course, and to create a distinction between the two classes of students, often to the disparagement of the former. It is argued: the young man is destined for a business career. He ought to busy himself with the problems of trade and commerce. He is not seeking an education for culture but for strictly utilitarian ends. Literature, the classics, higher mathematics, the sciences, are not for him; they are foreign to his needs, if not to his taste. They belong to the young man who is to enter college. It is best that the young business man should follow a practical line of training specially suited to fit him for the matter-offact work of the office and store.

This view overlooks the fact that the young business man has social relations, relations as a citizen to his state or municipality, to the future generations thru his children. This division in education as applied to high schools is a mistake. If anything it is the young business man who should get the cultural side of the high school course, the very best which the school has to offer. It is his last chance. The college man can supplement any deficiencies in his high school training. What the business world needs is better education for its young men along the line of those subjects which make for breadth of view, for high ideals, honorable conduct, for well-rounded character. This training is not to be found in such subjects as commercial arithmetic, commercial geography, shorthand, or bookkeeping.

The true need of the commercial world is well illustrated in the movement which has brought about the establishment of commercial courses in our universities and colleges. The University of California has a department of commerce; so have Michigan, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Columbia and Yale have a joint course fitting for the public service. At the beginning of the present year Harvard University has established a "graduate school" of business.

The idea of commercial instruction is repugnant to the average academic mind. The movement is therefore not

wholly voluntary on the part of the colleges. It has come as a response to the reiterated criticism of the business world. that the college education is unpractical; that as a matter of fact it tends to unfit a young man for a business career. The movement, however, represents also an admission on the part of business men that there is a power and effectiveness in the university training which the business world needs and would have, if possible.

Two examples will illustrate further this point. In 1897, the Chief of the Civil Service Commission at Washington, in conversation with the President of Stanford University, said that what the public service needed most was educated office men; that if we could send him twenty-five graduates of Stanford University who were at the same time competent stenographers, notwithstanding its eligible list contained hundreds of qualified stenographers, the Commission could place them at once in good positions where there was practically no limit to the promotion they might earn.

The occasion of this statement was the then recent rise of Mr. George B. Cortelyou to be secretary to President McKinley and the promotion of Mr. Howell to an assistant secretaryship in the Treasury Department, both men having entered the service as stenographers, but stenographers with an educational equipment of college grade which placed them head and shoulders above the average run of stenographers.

Again, Mr. R. B. Hale, a business man of San Francisco, in an address before the students of Stanford University last winter, speaking of the reason why business men of wealth and large responsibilities seldom retired before failing health and powers forced them to do so,-the common belief being that the fever of gain, the desire to see money grow, held them enthralled,―said there was often a very different reason, namely, that they could not find substitutes into whose hands they felt safe in passing their interests. Pride in the enterprise their hands and brain had builded, and dread to see it deteriorate thru inexperience and mismanagement, often led them to continue at their posts till breaking health or even death itself overtook them. He intimated that what

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