I trust that these examples have made my point clear, for it is certainly simple enough.  If vocational education means simply that the arts and skills of industrial life are to be transmitted safely from generation to generation, a minimum of educational machinery is all that is necessary, and we do not need to worry much about it.  If vocational education means simply this, it need not trouble us much; for economic conditions will sooner or later provide for an effective means of transmission, just as economic conditions will sooner or later perfect, through a blind and empirical process of elimination, the most effective methods of agriculture, as in the case of China and other overpopulated nations of the Orient.

But I take it that we mean by vocational education something more than this, just as we mean by cultural education something more than a veneer of language, history, pure science, and the fine arts.  In the former case, the practical problems of life are to be lifted to the plane of fundamental principles; in the latter case, fundamental principles are to be brought down to the plane of present, everyday life.  I can see no discrepancy here.  To my mind there is no cultural subject that has not its practical outcome, and there is no practical subject that has not its humanizing influence if only we go to some pains to seek it out.  I do not object to a subject of instruction that promises to put dollars into the pockets of those that study it.  I do object to the mode of teaching that subject which fails to use this effective economic appeal in stimulating a glimpse of the broader vision.  I do not object to the subject that appeals to the pupil’s curiosity because it informs him of the wonderful deeds that men have done in the past.  I do object to that mode of teaching this subject which simply arouses interest in a spectacular deed, and then fails to use this interest in the interpretation of present problems.  I do not contend that in either case there must be an explicit pointing of morals and drawing of lessons.  But I do contend that the teacher who is in charge of the process should always have this purpose in the forefront of his consciousness, and—­now by direct comparison, now by indirection and suggestion—­guide his pupils to the goal desired.

I hope that through careful tests, we shall some day be able to demonstrate that there is much that is good and valuable on both sides of every controverted educational question.  After all, in this complex and intricate task of teaching to which you and I are devoting our lives, there is too much at stake to permit us for a moment to be dogmatic,—­to permit us for a moment to hold ourselves in any other attitude save one of openness and reception to the truth when the truth shall have been demonstrated.  Neither your ideas nor mine, nor those of any man or group of men, living or dead, are important enough to stand in the way of the best possible accomplishment of that great task to which we have set our hands.