Learning and Doing in Life
The following timely strictures upon the general tendency of college education is worthy of general attention, and, as a cotemporary says, is "more than a college question":— "It is to be regretted that so wide a difference exists between the employments of early years and those of manhood and womanhood. That fifteen or twenty years should be spent in learning without doing, and the rest of it in doing without learning, cannot be a wise arrangement. The break is too sudden. The youth, on leaving school or college, is at once plunged into a new world, requiring qualities and capabilities that have never hitherto been called forth, and he finds it hard, if not impossible, to make his mental possessions available for practical use. If young people were accustomed to do more, and older ones to learn more, life would be happier and more successful. In fact, these two should never be separated, but act and react with each other all through life. Just as the earth is ever receiving sunlight, air, and moisture, and at the same time giving out her blossoms, fruit, and fragrance, so our best interests demand a continual taking in and giving out—a perpetual alternation between learning and doing from the earliest to the latest years. Whatever tends to divorce these, or to limit them to different epochs, banishing the one from youth and the other from maturity, must be detrimental."