Practicing on the Public.
A teacher of English in Ohio had a fondness for businesslike and effective business letters. She very properly wanted her pupils to know how to write them, and correctly held that the way to learn to write them is to write them. So she gave them the names of a number of factories and told them to write letters ordering their goods, mailing the letters in a very real way. It was a fine scheme, highly educational.
Educational also were the results of the scheme. Business houses are alert, as the teacher of English discovered. She was speedily introduced to the efficient modern "follow-up" system. In response to her pupils' practice letters six salesmen from distant towns arrived upon the scene, each eager to expound the merits of his firm's product. One man traveled 240 miles in the confident expectation of persuading a twelve-year-old school miss to buy a silo. Unitedly and determinedly they interviewed that teacher of English. Their language may not have been classic, but it was forceful. The English teacher will not hereafter be so ardent for verisimilitude in her class exercises.
This episode illustrates with perfect fairness the folly of the frequent practicing on the public.
Young theological students are all too often allowed to preach before they have anything to say or know how to say it.
Young novelists turn out books by the score every year, though they have not wisdom or experience enough to give value to a chapter.
Young teachers are allowed to practice upon long-suffering children with half-baked theories and untested methods.
Callow dentists, fledgling lawyers, inexperienced doctors, are thrust upon the poor public and told to "work up a practice."
"But we must begin somewhere," they say.
Yes, but it is usually possible to begin under the eye of experience, the guidance of skill. It is not necessary to practice on the public.