eir attitude
should always be one of effortful attention,--of willingness to do the
task that we think it best for them to do. You see it is a sort of a
double-headed policy, and how to carry it out is a perplexing problem.
Of so much I am certain, however, at the outset: if the pupil takes the
attitude that we are there to interest and entertain him, we shall make
a sorry fiasco of the whole matter, and inasmuch as this very tendency
is in the air at the present time, I feel justified in at least
referring to its danger.

Now if this ideal of persistent effort is the most useful thing that
can come out of education, what is the next most useful? Again, as I
analyze what I obtained from my own education, it seems to me that, next
to learning that disagreeable tasks are often well worth doing, the
factor that has helped me most in getting a living has been the method
of solving the situations that confronted me. After all, if we simply
have the ideal of resolute and aggressive and persistent attack, we may
struggle indefinitely without much result. All problems of life involve
certain common factors. The essential difference between the educated
and the uneducated man, if we grant each an equal measure of pluck,
persistence, and endurance, lies in the superior ability of the educated
man to analyze his problem effectively and to proceed intelligently
rather than blindly to its solution. I maintain that education should
give a man this ideal of attacking any problem; furthermore I maintain
that the education of the present day, in spite of the anathemas that
are hurled against it, is doing this in richer measure than it has ever
been done before. But there is no reason why we should not do it in
still greater measure.

I once knew two men who were in the business of raising fruit for
commercial purposes. Each had a large orchard which he operated
according to conventional methods and which netted him a comfortable
income. One of these men was a man of narrow education: the other a man
of liberal education, although his training had not been directed in
any way toward the problems of horticulture. The orchards had borne
exceptionally well for several years, but one season, when the fruit
looked especially promising, a period of wet, muggy weather came along
just before the picking season, and one morning both these men went out
into their orchards, to find the fruit very badly "specked." Now the
conventional thing to do