BOOKS OR MIND?

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 123, 20 November 1931, Page 7

BOOKS OR MIND?

. Is a good education merely a knowledge of the contents of modern books, or is it the cultivation of the intellect? It is certainly the latter, and something more. Should the modern schdol child.be allowed to narrow its own conceptions, fix its own prejudices, confuse its own ideas, be dependent solely on its own efforts to pilot itself over the Seven. Seas of Life? We have been told also that.the United States, more than any other great country, isa land of averages, and that the average of attainment, is sought in everything. Therefore, when the average man speaks incorrectly, the general opinion is that any speech that differs from it is an affectation. That is all wrong, even as is the accusation I that when1 an American speaks correctly he is aping., the English, for there are quite as many Englishmen who murder the King's English daily as there: are Americans; who abuse th 6 President's speech. The reeommenda'tioris seems to be founded on a fanatical admiration of our own literary talents to the exclusion of all else' that preceded it. Ugly as some of it actually It, who would/neglect' the so-called "well of English uridefiled" that has Kelped our advance along the highway of culture? ' . ;