The CHEM A WA AMERICAN
Page 3
MR. LAV ATTA MAKES IMPRESSION
(F rom the Q uiver
H erbert S pencer )
of
Men dress their children’s minds as they do their
bodies, in the prevailing fashion.
People are beginning to see that the first requisite
for success in life, is to be a good animal.
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Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of
your discipline should be to produce a self-governing
being; not to produce a being to be governed by others.
Not only in times past, but almost as much in our
own era, that knowledge which conduces to personal
well-being has been postponed to that which brings ap
plause.
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We are guilty of something like a platitude when we
say thoughout his after career a boy, nine cases out of
ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purpose.
To prepare for complete living is the function which
education has to discharge, and the only rational mode
of judging of an educational course is, to judge in
what degree it discharges such function.
As, throughout life, not what we are, but what we
shall be thought, is the question; so in education, the
question is, not the intrinsic value of knowledge, so
much as the intrinsic effects on others.
Before there can be any rational curriculum, we
must settle things it most concerns us to know, or to
use a word of Bacon’s now unfortunately obsolete—
we must determine the relative value of knowledge.
As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered
habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevail
ing tendency to discontinue it when free from the
coertion of parents and teachers.
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Do not expect from a child any great amount of
moral goodness. During early years every civilized
man passes thiough that phase of character exhibited
by the barbarous race from which he is descended.
There is no denying the fact that wherever he goes
Mr. LaVatta, who a few weeks ago was a visitor at our
school and who is well known to our people, makes a
most favorable impression and his dynamic and forceful
personality registers to the great advantage of himself
and his people. From the following article, which
appeared in a recent issue of the Oregon Journal, it
will be seen that Mr. LaVatta’s ideas are strongly en
dorsed by the editor of that paper—read:
“Work is the salvation of the Indian,” said George
P. La Vatta, full-blooded Shoshone Indian, to the
Portland Kiwanis club last Tuesday. His own pic
turesque story illustrates.
He was born on an Indian reservation in Idaho.
There he spent his childhood.
Until he was well
grown he did not know a word of English. Then he
heard of the offer of the United States government to
give him an education.
With schooling came ambition. ‘ ‘I want to go out in
the world and work and live like other people, ’ ’ he
told the Indian agent. “Don’t try it,” was the advice
in return. “Go back to the farm and work with your
people.”
Instead, he walked weary miles to a Union Pacific
station. He asked for a job. At first it was not forth
coming. “They told me,” he related, “that Indians
are lazy and the only good Indian is a dead one.”
Nevertheless, he persisted. He induced the railroad
people to give him work. From the bottom he went
toward the top. The United States department of the
interior, in recognition of his earnestness and industry,
appointed him head of the division of Indian employ
ment. “People try to sympathize with me,” he said,
“because the white man killed the buffalo and took
the Indians’ lands. I tell them that belongs to the
past. The Indian on a reservation can only deterior
ate. But if he will go out and work and live like
other people he has a future as promising as that of
any other American citizen.”
The advice that George La Vatta gives to his people
is the advice that when given and followed has ac
counted for success and fulfilled ambition in all the
present and past. Regardless of race or creed, it is
the key. In both Portland and the Oregon country
no more challenging summons could be heard than
“Work.”
On Thursday evening Mr. Teter, head of our dairy
department, and his assistant, Mr. Shishkin, motored
over to Monmouth to attend a lecture sponsored by
the Holstein Cattle Breeders’ Association. Mr. Berry,
in charge of the machine and blacksmith shops, accom
panied them.