Date: September 1, 1930
Location: Northampton, MA
(Original document available here)
Another school year is opening. Over 27,000,000 scholars will be enrolled. To this great throng will be added more than 800,000 college students. The teaching force reaches toward a million. Education is a great business enterprise requiring an expenditure of well over $2,000,000,000 each year. This will soon be felt in many avenues of trade.
While it is easy to waste money on education, it is the one thing which we cannot afford to curtail. The true ideal would seem to be a system that supplies those in the lower grades with certain basic information and those in the upper grades with the power to think.
Under the modern tendency education covers many subjects. This method subjects the student to the danger of being only superficial and not having a through knowledge of any subject.
The school is not the end but only the beginning of an education. Yet its place cannot be filled in any other way. The best thing the millions of our youth can do to assure their future success is to work faithfully at their studies. That opportunity for improvement and discipline will never return.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge Says: Dispatches Written by Former-President Coolidge and Syndicated to Newspapers in 1930-1931 (Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation)
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of Robert Manchester who prepared this document for digital publication.