Excerpt from Harvard College Class OrationThis deserves your interest because it min isters to perpetuity of truth. The organized teaching of school and college, completing and reenforcing the unorganized teaching of environment, mainly accounts on the spiritual side for the web and tissue of civilized living. The great university with richly stocked libra ries, and the little red schoolhouse with blue back spelling books endow the present with the experience of the past. The elementary school perpetuates elementary knowledge of language and history and art and science. Now, our impressive civilization rests upon economic efficiency. The school for all the children of all the people should transmit a knowledge of all our fundamental interestsfrom sawing wood 'to reading Scripture! Advanced knowledge is rendered permanent by secondary schools and higher institut ions. By g1v1ng the exceptional man an exceptional education, they give the nation guiding intelligence. If our popular leaders are men of fragmentary education, they will land the people in many a ditch. The trained leader is able to induce the present to recruit its scouts from the past. Taught the lessons of the past, fitted to grapple with principles and to make plain the emptiness of sham, our leaders should be rendered responsive to sound ideals. From these secondary and higher institutions come the teachers of our schools and colleges. The need of teachers who have been taught, is keenly felt through out our educational endeavor, from backwoods school to university. Higher institutions give us professional men. The real inventions and motive powers which impel society for ward and upward, says President Eliot.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.