LITTLE JOURNEYS
Victor Hugo says, ``When you open a school, you close a prison.\'\'
This seems to require a little explanation. Victor Hugo did not have
in mind a theological school, nor yet a young ladies\' seminary, nor an
English boarding-school, nor a military academy, and least of all a
parochial institute. What he was thinking of was a school where people--
young and old-- were taught to be self-respecting, self-reliant and
efficient--to care for themselves, to help bear the burdens of the world, to
assist themselves by adding to the happiness of others.
Victor Hugo fully realized that the only education that serves is the
one that increases human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An
education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles, position--immunity--
may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race and its gain
on the whole is nil.