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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

"Following the Equator, Part 7"

This market
consisted of some thousands of small clerical posts under the government
--the supply of material for it was multitudinous. If this youth with the
flowing style and the blossoming English was occupying a small railway
clerkship, it meant that there were hundreds and hundreds as capable as
he, or he would be in a high place; and it certainly meant that there
were thousands whose education and capacity had fallen a little short,
and that they would have to go without places. Apparently, then, the
colleges of India were doing what our high schools have long been doing
--richly over-supplying the market for highly-educated service; and thereby
doing a damage to the scholar, and through him to the country.
At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries inflicted by the high
school in making handicrafts distasteful to boys who would have been
willing to make a living at trades and agriculture if they had but had
the good luck to stop with the common school. But I made no converts.
Not one, in a community overrun with educated idlers who were above
following their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no market for
their book-knowledge.


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