--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Larsen, Lewis W. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 14 number: 5 published: 1911-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Lewis W. Larsen, "A Crisis," *Improvement Era* 14, no. 5 (March 1911): 437.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1405unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1405unse start_page: 437 end_page: 437 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1911-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1405unse publication_year: 1911 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1911, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Crisis THE GREATEST PROBLEM OE THE HUMAN RACE. 439 which another should receive. I have no quarrel with any form of education or any particular subject. They all have their part to play in the development of the human race. The human mind is peculiarly constituted; it hangs on to old-fashioned ideas and tra- ditions. It is remarkable how we fight tenaciously against the acceptance of a new idea; how we fear that the acceptance of a new idea will be the means of destroying the race by depriving it of an education. We once formerly thought that kings ruled by divine right. In some parts of the world today that conception is tenaciously held by a portion of the human race. At one time it was thought that it was the divine right of a gentleman's son to receive an education, and that an education was not for the com- mon rabble. President Eliot, of Harvard, has clearly demon- strated that the so-called classical education of today did not have a divine origin, but that it is only three hundred years old ; and this, in the language of President Jordan of Stanford, "displaced, after a severe struggle, an entirely different course of training, consisting of scholastic theology and metaphysics, while this in turn was simply the usurper of a throne formerly occupied by grammar, rhetoric and logic, with a little mathematics, music and astronomy. Thus," he continues, "a complete revolution of the whole list of studies might occur again without scholarship becom- ing a by-word or education perishing from the earth." Why, less than a hundred years ago the scientific world could not receive an audience before the throne of education. At that time the faculty of Harvard grudgingly granted permission to the establishment of a two-hour course in science (botany) through one semester. This was all the science taught in that great institution at that time, and in fact in America. But today it is estimated that it would take a brilliant student at least thirteen and a half years to complete all the scientific studies offered at that same institution. Thus it has taken a hundred years of con- stant fighting for the scientific world to gain its place in curricu- lums of the schools of today. How long will it be before we realize that it matters not so much what we study, as it does the manner in which we study it? Horrible though the thought may be, I can even conceive of an educated man who has never seen a text book on chemistrv