The Practical-theoretical form of education
is not limited to the apprentice or to the new
employee but is equally valuable to the expert,
the oldest employees, and the employer.
This fact is taken advantage of most wisely
by the National Cash Register Company.
This company provides instruction suited to
the needs of all its salesmen, whether they are
new and inexperienced or whether they are the
oldest, most efficient salesmen. By means of
letters, books, demonstrations, and conventions
the salesmen are constantly provided with
educative experiences and are kept from the
narrowness and lack of progress so characteristic
of men in the commercial life after they
have become thoroughly established and relatively
efficient in their work.
In keeping with this modern tendency to
<p 273>
supplement practical experience with theoretical
interpretation, we find a very pronounced
increase in the utilization of all agencies that
interpret and enrich the daily toil. Men who
are fully employed (_e.g_. journeymen and salesmen)
have realized the necessity of some form
of theoretical instruction to enable them to
profit by their daily practical experience.
This fact is almost pathetically demonstrated
by the multitudes who are seeking for such
instruction through correspondence and evening
schools. Every progressive engineer,
teacher, physician, and lawyer keeps abreast
of the best thought of the day by means of
frequent conventions, conferences, books, and
periodicals. The experience secured from such
agencies is essential to progress; only by such
agencies can he learn the latest and most perfect
interpretation of the experience of his
professional life. Likewise the non-professional
man engaged in commerce or industry
finds the modern world to be so complex that
mere practical experience is no longer adequate
to enable him to meet the demands made
<p 274>
upon him. The theoretical training of his
youth (even though it include the college and
the technical school) is totally inadequate to
interpret for him the new relationships which
arise from day to day. He needs a theory
that grows out of his practical experience and
that enables him to understand and to improve
upon his practical work. The most common
means for providing him with such experience
he finds in his conventions and informal conferences
with his peers and in his trade
journals and technical books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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