The eleventh Assembly has wrought its work, and it is safe to say no
Assembly ever made more converts to the Chautauqua Plan. Among the
number, too, were many of the best thinkers and ablest educators in the
country. Many left Chautauqua this summer convinced of the possibilities
in the work, and resolved to spread its influence. One of these, the Rev.
Dr. A. A. Livermore, president of the Unitarian Theological School at
Meadville, Pa., a man widely known as a ripe scholar, has published an
article analyzing the Chautauqua plan. This article explains most clearly
the strong features of the work. After describing the enthusiastic
Commencement the writer says of the C. L. S. C.: “College education,
as it has been hitherto carried on, has been largely a forced concern;
students have been sent to school, rather than gone on their free and
spontaneous will. The pupils of Chautauqua are voluntary agents, and
engage in their work with a will. It is the difference between task
work and love work. Almost all schools and colleges are handicapped by
the compulsion necessary to bring their pupils up to the mark. But here
all goes like clock work. There is a vim and abandon which argue the
best results. Not knowledge, but the love of knowledge, is the best of
accomplishments, and that is breathed into the Chautauquan graduates.
“The _religious element_ is made a leading principle in the Chautauqua
education, and it is the true one. Intellect for intellect, taste for
taste, study for study, lacks the genuine inspiration, but put on the
annex of religious faith in God, Christ and immortality, and you have got
an effective leverage to raise the whole nature of man. The Chautauqua
Idea is not so much to make specialists; as for example, engineers,
editors, ministers, doctors, lawyers, but well instructed men and women.
Human nature is a diamond in the rough, and it is worth polishing and
setting for its own sake. God having bestowed such a magnificent treasure
on man, he is guilty who does not put it to its intended purpose, and
return it to its author improved and developed to its best extent.
“Another fine idea of the Chautauqua University is to _educate people at
their homes_. Massing students together in great monastic institutions
is dangerous business. Humanity heats and moulds and corrupts when
put into crowded institutions, be they prisons or colleges. Some of
the worst disorders perpetrated in society take place in schools and
universities where young people are herded together in great numbers with
the restraints of home and society largely thrown off. This scheme is
to carry on the work at the fireside, on the farm, at the shop, by the
work bench. Carry education to the people, instead of carrying the people
to education. And still further it is the idea not to take people from
their usual occupations after they are educated, not to take farmers,
mechanics, housewives from their present callings and put them in the
learned professions, but to leave them still where they are, and start
them on a course of mental and moral improvement which they can conduct
all their lifetime at their homes, and while still engaged in their
several industries. This is a capital merit of the system, and deserves
especial commendation.
“So planned and so engineered, Chautauqua is the university of _the
common people_, of the great middle class that constitute the strength
and glory of every country, and especially of ours. Its numbers are
prodigious, its extent is world wide. It sets a splendid example for all
nations. It strikes the keynote for the education eventually of the whole
human race. In our land it is destined to do more for the perpetuation of
our free institutions than many another time-honored school or college
that limits its benefits to some privileged class, sex, color or section.
Chautauqua blows a trumpet to every quarter of the compass, and says to
all, ‘Come ye and buy wine and milk without money and without price.’”