4. Thrift. Not the ability to hoard as a miser does, but the ability to spend one's earnings economically, to purchase property and to lay by a little for a rainy day.
5. Christian morality. Not the ability to shout well, and pray well and testify well, but the ability to live the Christ life.
6. The ability to do something well that the world desires bad enough to be willing to pay a good price for it. This includes not only mechanical but also commercial and scholastic achievements.
7. Ability to lead in the light of modern civilization.
8. Love for justice and contempt for lawlessness.
Experience and thought convince me that the "highest education" is the only agency that will instill all of these virtues into a people without detriment to the multitudes that are forced to stop school before graduation. Highest education is a new phrase; but can we not truthfully say that there are three system of education in the world to-day: the lower or industrial education, the higher education and the highest education?
In each of these three systems the student begins his education by an attempt to master the English branches, and in each attention is given to developing the moral side of the pupil.
In the lower or industrial education, parallel with the elementally English training, or after its completion, the student learns how to work at one or more trades, but he gets no training in the higher English branches nor in languages nor science. This system may instill into students the majority of the regenerating virtues mentioned above, but it is impossible for this system to impart the ability to lead in the light of modern civilization. Without this virtue one is not fit to lead in this strenuous age. A race without competent leaders is doomed, and any system of education which does not furnish such leaders is defective and doomed. It has been well said that the advocates of the lower or industrial education are welding a chain that will bind the race in industrial servitude for ages.
In the higher education, after completing an elementary English training, the individual takes a collegiate course in science, literature, history and language; but no attention is given to industrial training. Such a course does instill into those who complete it all of the regenerating virtues mentioned above; but how about the multitudes that necessity forces to drop out before the course is completed? It is a sad, sad fact that the taste they have had of something different renders them not content to be servants, yet their training is not sufficient to enable them to be anything else.
In the highest education a thorough training is given in the common English branches, but parallel with it instruction is imparted in the care and practical use of tools. The elementary course is followed by a secondary course, in which, along with instruction in the elements of languages, literature and sciences, is given a thorough training in some trade. Above this come the colleges and technological schools, wherein the pupil specializes according to his natural tastes. In its ability to instill into those who complete it the regenerating virtues mentioned above this highest education ranks with the higher education. In this respect neither is superior to the other. But when it comes to fitting those who stop before the complete course has been mastered to successfully fight the battle of life, then highest education is infinitely superior to the higher education. Indeed it is the only education that helps abundantly not only the graduates, but also those unfortunate legions that drop out while yet undergraduates.