[A]
[Footnote A: Thorstein Veblen.--Imperial Germany and the Industrial
Revolution.]
First, then, it is not certain that the system of German industrial
education would succeed; and, second, if it did succeed it is not the
sort of education that America wants.
America wants industrial efficiency, it must have efficient workers if
it holds its place among nations, and American people will prove their
efficiency or their inefficiency as they are capable of using the
heritage which industrial evolution has given the world. But what
shall we use this efficiency for? For the sake of the heritage? For
the sake of business? For the sake of Empire?
Business knows very clearly why it wants it, but as a rule most of us
are not clearly conscious that we need, for the sake of our expansive
existence, to be industrially efficient. We are not even conscious
that industry is the great field for adventure and growth, because we
use that field not for the creative but for the exploitive purpose.
It is the present duty of American educators to realize these two
points: that industry is the great field for adventure and growth;
that as it is used now the opportunities for growth are inhibited
in the only field where productive experience can be a common one.
Shortly it will be the mission, of educators to show that by opening
up the field for creative purpose, fervor for industrial enterprise
and good workmanship may be realized; that only as the content of
industry in its administration as well as in the technique of its
processes is opened up for experiment and first-hand experience,
will a universal impulse for work be awakened.
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