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We should do well not to deprecate the value of such practical
courses as those just mentioned. For girls, a course in Shorthand or
Child Care, and for boys, a course in Crop Rotation or The Manufacture
of Textiles, may contribute more to their future happiness and well-
being than any single course in science or languages. The economic
basis of life cannot be disregarded. Furthermore, such organized in-=
struction may be used to give the student a professional pride in doing

well work which too often is regarded as unrelieved drudgery. Nursing
is an excellent example of an occupation which requires arduous labor,

nervous strain, and distasteful tasks, but which is often practised with
an enthusiasm resulting from a professional sense of the importance of
the work to be donee

It is clear, therefore, that into the realm of formal education has
been obtruded a wide variety of practical courses involving particular
techniques and skills which may be of great economic benefit to students
in their future lives. There is no question that these courses will con
tinue to be taught, but it may well be questioned whether they should be
taught in the college or taught somewhere else, The tendency at present
seems to be to include them in the liberal arts curriculum, colleges exe
tending their programs to include professional and vocational courses,
while many strictly vocational schools have added “cultural” courses until
they have become in mame, and often in fact, liberal arts colleges. The
arrangement is often expressed as "learning to live while learning to make
a living," or in some similar phrase. The danger here is that "learning
to make a living" will dominate the student's thought to the exclusion of
all else; hence we find many students and some instructors expressing im=
patience with such subjects as languages and higher mathematics when they
might be spending time on something “practical.” It is only fair to say
that the reverse attitude is taken in some professional schools, where
students are thought to have developed too narrowly professional a point
of view and to need the broadening effects of a better general education.

In considering so important a problem, the college faculties should
take the lead and approach it in a spirit of compromise. It is foolish
for teachers of the traditional subjects in effect to draw their skirts
about them and cry, “Away, ye unclean ones{!" to the newer vocational courses.
The basis for including or excluding the latter is a matter of first im-
portance for consideration by college faculties, which should be willing
to suggest possible ways of handling the whole problem in the most effi-
cient manner.

As an approach to the problem, we may arrange the possible subjects
of instruction in three separate groups: 1) work which involves primarily
the acquirement of manual skills; 2) work which is designed to prepare the
student for a specific profession but which requires a relatively high
degree of mental effort and intellectual discipline; 3) work which is pri-
marily cultural, preparing the student for a vocation only in the general
sense that it develops his mind and helps him better to understand the world
about hime