THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH
I have ventured to suggest student representation on boards controlling
our colleges; and perhaps you thought I was showing too much confidence
in student wisdom. Fortunately I can show you a few places where
students are beginning to take up the problems of their own educating,
and to find fault with the courses served out to them by the
interlocking directorate. For example, Mt. Holyoke, a woman’s college
with a thousand students, located at South Hadley, Massachusetts; they
have organized the “Mt. Holyoke College Community,” governed entirely by
committees of students and faculty. I note that they are fully aware of
the various functions of government, and how to make a democracy work.
They have arranged “an executive body consisting of the acting President
of the College Community (a student) and the presidents of various
student and faculty organizations; a legislative body consisting of one
member for every fifteen students and one for every five members of the
faculty; and a judicial body consisting of five students and two members
of the faculty.” Also these students have organized a committee on the
curriculum, and three hundred and forty of them have reported “a strong
demand for the elimination of required Latin and mathematics, and for
the requirement of physiology and economics; also for modern government
and hygiene.”
More significant yet, the students of Barnard have got busy, right under
the nose of Nicholas Miraculous! They organized a committee on their own
initiative, and have constructed an “ideal” curriculum. Listen to what
these progressive young ladies purpose requiring of freshmen: a course
on the history of mankind, counting ten points, “a synthetic survey
course designed to bring out the chief aspects of man’s relation to his
environment by tracing present conditions and tendencies to historic
processes; the physical nature of the universe ... man as a product of
evolution ... the early history of man ... the concept of culture ...
the historical processes leading to present cultural conditions ...
modern problems, political, economic and social.” Next they want a
course, counting six points, in human biology and psychology, “giving an
outline of human development and distribution on earth, man in relation
to his nearest kin, a survey of human powers and functions, an
introduction to general biology, the structure of the human body,
outlines of embryology, functions of the body and their
inter-relationships”—and laboratory work on all these problems.
Also—imagine young ladies actually putting such things on paper!—they
ask for:
“Specific human development of the sex-reproductive-child bearing
function.
a. “The facts of structure, functions, development and hygiene of
the sex and reproductive apparatus of the male and female.
b. “The outstanding facts of maternity and paternity.
c. “Effects of sex on individual human development from
fertilization to maturity.
d. “The nature and power of the sex impulse.
e. “The gradually developed sex controls imposed on the individual
by society.
f. “The pathological effects of perverse and unsocial uses of sex in
society.
g. “The facts underlying a satisfactory adjustment in marriage and
homemaking.”
Also they want a course in “general mathematical analysis,” counting six
points; “the technique of expression,” counting two points; and
“Engliliterature,” counting six points, with the aim “to present
literature as an aspect of life; the emphasis throughout is therefore on
subject matter rather than on technical or historical problems.”
Yes; and also these young ladies of Barnard have taken up the problem of
having Nicholas Miraculous tell them whom they may listen to. It was
declared to them that the good repute of the college must be preserved,
and after an argument they submitted to that imposition; but one thing
they laid down very emphatically—they want the college authorities to
give up the idea of protecting their tender young minds! As they put it:
“Resolved, that it is the feeling of the Student Council:
“That there is nothing gained in shielding students during four years
from problems and ideas they must face during the rest of their life,
and
“That if they are considered incapable of rational judgment upon
theories presented to them, the solution lies in further training in
scientific method rather than in quarantine from ideas, and
“That a reputation for fearless open-mindedness is more to be desired
for an academic institution than material prosperity.”
Also the Harvard students are waking up, under the influence of the
Liberal Club. They have been discussing the subject of education,
calling in various professors and deans to address them, and last spring
the members of the corporation and the board of overseers were the
guests of the club, to consider inaugurating the English tutorial system
at Harvard. Also Harvard has a cooperative society, with three students
upon its board of directors, and the Barnard students are planning a
cooperative book-store, to be run entirely by themselves.
Such things as this have a way of spreading; they are spreading rapidly
in Germany, where there is a movement of insurgent youth, taking steps
to form a “World League of Youth,” to make over the thinking and the
social life of mankind. You will no doubt admit that the youth of
Germany have justification for being discontented with the management of
their Fatherland. Let me quote from their manifesto:
“Comrades! We are united in the hatred of the institutions of our social
life and of our time. We ask ourselves: Whose fault are these
institutions, this civilization? On whose conscience rest these
political systems, these schools, these churches, these politics, these
newspapers and so much else? The ‘adult’ people....”
Again, here is a statement from one of the leaders of this new and
vitally important movement:
“The unifying characteristic, indeed the only sense of the youth
movement is this: we no longer want to obey laws, coercions, customs
that come to us from the outside and that have aims without a living,
inner meaning to ourselves. We want to form our lives in accordance with
laws that are within us, laws toward which alone we feel a
responsibility.”
Our own country has been more fortunate than Germany; we have still a
great measure of prosperity, we are not yet in the pit of hell with
Central Europe. But we are sliding, and sliding fast, and those who run
our country do not know how to stop the process. I have shown you the
League of the Old Men, suppressing thought and wrecking the world; and
now here is the answer—the League of Youth! The Old Men were raised in
the old order, their thinking is bound by its limitations. But we, the
youth of the world, live in a new age, and have new problems to deal
with. We cannot well do worse than our elders have done; we may very
easily do better. Since we have longer to live in this world than our
elders, we have surely the right to save it if we can!