the wealth, equipment, and students of all of our colleges fifty
years ago. Our American agricultural and mechanical colleges,
the greater number of which have arisen within ten years, now
enroll more than 25,000 students. In 1850 there were only eight
non-professional graduate students in the United States. In 1876,
when Johns Hopkins opened, there were 400 such students. There are
now at least 10,000 students of this class, and every year finds an
additional number of our larger institutions including graduate
courses preparing for practical vocations, with many of them adding
facilities for graduate study during the summer.
The following more concrete comparison by Professor E. E. Slosson
reveals the manner in which the new State institutions are rapidly
meeting the demands of modern times for technical and professional
education; for the chief progress in these institutions has
been not in the old-fashioned culture studies, but in special
departments, including well-nigh everything from engineering and
dairying to music and ceramics:
Total Annual Total Average
Annual Appropriation Instructing Expenditure
Income. for Salaries Staff in for Instruction
of Instructing University. per Student.
INSTITUTIONS. Staff.
Columbia University
$1,675,000 $1,145,000 559 $280
Harvard University
1,827,789 841,970 573 209
University of Chicago
1,304,000 699,000 291 137
University of Michigan
1,078,000 536,000 285 125
Yale University
1,088,921 524,577 365 158
Cornell University
1,082,513 510,931 507 140
University of Illinois
1,200,000 491,675 414 136
University of Wisconsin
998,634 489,810 297 157
University of Pennsylvania
589,226 433,311 375 117
University of California
844,000 408,000 350 136
Stanford University
850,000 365,000 136 230
Princeton University
442,232 308,650 163 235
University of Minnesota
515,000 263,000 303 66
Johns Hopkins University
311,870 211,013 172 324
WHAT IS THE CHIEF END OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE?
This sudden and enormous advance in the pursuit of technical
studies, which have made the State universities formidable
rivals to our older, privately endowed institutions, has aroused
uncertainty as to the real object of collegiate training. Modern
commercialism, which has said that you must touch liberal studies,
if at all, in a utilitarian way, has swept in a mighty current
through our American universities. The undergraduate is feeling
increasingly the pressure of the outside modern world--the world
not of values, but of dollars. The sense of strain, of rush, and of
anxiety which generally pervades our business, our public and our
professional life, has pervaded the atmosphere in which men should
be taught first of all to think and to grow.
The present tendency of students is to feel that any form of
education that does not associate itself directly with some form
of practical and significant action is artificial, unreal, and
undesirable. Last winter I visited an institution on the Pacific
coast where literary studies were considered, among certain
classes of students, as not only unpractical, but almost unmanly.
As a result of such drift in educational sentiment, the American
undergraduate is in danger of getting prepared for an emergency
rather than for life. He is losing,
In action’s dizzying eddy whirled,
The something that infects the world.
The student leads his life noisily and hurriedly. He scarcely takes
time to see it all plainly without dust and confusion. There is
all about him a blurred sense of motion and duties. His culture
lies upon him in lumps. He does not allow it time to impress him.
College is a bewildering episode rather than a place of clear
vision.
THE NEED OF LEADERS RATHER THAN MONEY-MAKERS
It is far easier to turn out of our colleges mechanical experts
than it is to create men who are thoughtful, men who know
themselves and the world. The value of the modern man to society
does not depend upon his ability to do always the same thing
that everybody else is doing. College men should be fitted to
_make_ public sentiment as well as to follow it. The educated
leader should be in advance of his period. Independence born
of thoughtfulness and self-control should mark his thought and
decision. The world looks to him for assistance in vigorously
resisting those deteriorating influences which would commercialize
intellect, coarsen ideas, and dilute true culture. His hours of
insight and vision in the world of art, ideas, letters, and moral
discipline should assist him to will aright when high vision is
blurred by the duties of the common day. His clearer conception
of highest truth should lead him to hope when other men despair.
Our colleges should train men who will be “trumpets that sing to
battle” against all complacency, indifference, and social wrong.
When a student, however, puts his profession of medicine or
engineering before that of responsible leadership in social,
political, moral, and industrial life, he ceases to be a real
factor in the modern world. We already have a thousand men who can
make money to one man who can think and make other men think. We
have a thousand followers to one genuine leader who incorporates
in his own mind and heart a high point of view and the ability
to present it in an attractive way. It is one thing for an
undergraduate to go out from his institution expert in electrical
science; it is quite another thing for him to so truly discover
the spirit of life itself, as to be able to harmonize his expert
ability with the broader and deeper life of the age in which he
lives.
The present undergraduate often fails lamentably at this very
point. He frequently reminds one of the remark of an old gentleman
to an old lady whom I saw at a backwoods railway-station in Oregon
watching a small white dog chasing with great zeal an express-train
which had surged past the station. The old lady, turning to her
companion, said eagerly, “Do you think he will catch it?” The old
man answered, “I am wondering what he will do with the blamed thing
if he _does_ catch it.” The college undergraduate likewise is often
uncertain about what he is to do with his profession beyond making
a living with it. Our colleges, with their technical training,
should give the conviction that a physician in a community is more
than a medical practitioner. His success as a physician brings with
it an obligation of interest and leadership in all of the social,
civic, and philanthropic movements of the town or city in which he
works. He should discover in college that he is to be more than
a doctor; that he is to be also a man and a citizen. In the last
analysis, for real success it is not a question whether a man is a
great engineer or a great electrician or a great surgeon; it is the
question of individual character.
The pressing inquiry, then, for all undergraduate training is,
Are we giving to our boys the kind of education which will fill
their future life with meaning? A man must live with himself. He
must be a good companion for himself. A college graduate, whatever
his specialty, should be able to spend an evening apart from the
crowd. The theater, the automobile, the lobster-palace, were
never intended to be the chief end of collegiate education. A
college course should give the undergraduate tastes, temperament,
and habits of reading. A graduate who studies to be a specialist
in any line needs also the education which will give him depth,
background, and the historical significance of civilization and
life in general.
A lady at a dinner-party was making desperate attempts to interest
in her conversation a certain business man who had been introduced
to her as a graduate of a prominent university. She talked to
him of books, education, theater, races, pictures, society, and
out-of-door life. All of her efforts were futile. Finally he
said, “Try me on leather; that’s my line.” This college graduate
lost something important in his incompetency for general and
intelligent conversation. His loss was more tragic, however,
as a representative of the so-called college-educated classes,
exponents of specialistic training, who have become materially
successful, but who are without those personal resources necessary
for their own enjoyment and profit, and who find themselves utterly
inadequate for guidance or incentive to their fellowmen.
ELECTIVE STUDIES
The system of elective studies which now widely characterizes
the training in our higher educational institutions has made it
increasingly difficult for the college man to secure a clear idea
of a college course and the comprehensive training which is his
due. In many institutions the whole curriculum is in a state of
unstable equilibrium. The endeavor to follow the demands of the
times and the desire to secure patrons and students, have often
brought to both the faculty and the undergraduate an uncertainty as
to the true meaning of the college. Even in freshman and sophomore
years the arrangement of studies is often left to the choice of
the immature student. In one of our oldest universities there is
at present only one prescribed course of study. For the rest, the
students are allowed to choose at their own sweet will, and their
choice, while dictated by a variety of motives, is influenced
in no small degree by the preponderance of emphasis, both in
buildings and faculty, upon technical education. Students are left
to flounder about in their selection of courses, guided neither by
curriculum nor life purpose. Recently I asked twenty-six students
why they chose their studies. Sixteen of them gave monetary or
practical reasons; six answered that the studies chosen furnished
the line of least resistance as far as preparation was concerned;
and only four had in mind comprehensive culture and preparation for
life.
I sympathize with the educator who said recently:
Is it not time that we stop asking indulgence for learning
and proclaim its sovereignty? Is it not time that we remind
the college men of this country that they have no right to
any distinctive place in any community unless they can show
it by intellectual achievement? that if a university is a
place for distinction at all, it must be distinguished by
conquest of mind?
While these tendencies threaten, instead of criticizing too
severely our universities and our undergraduates, we should strive
first to find the reason for these modern scientific and practical
lines of work; and second, to suggest, if possible, definite ways
by which a truer harmony in educational studies may be brought
about.
EDUCATION TO MEET POPULAR DEMANDS
The rapid extension of natural-physical science in the last fifty
years has had much to do with the change of accent in American
education. This change of emphasis has effected a distinct
transformation in the curriculum, in the college teacher and in the
student ideal.
Should one care to get one’s fingers dusty with ancient documents,
one might turn to an old leaflet in the files of the library at
Columbia, dated November 2, 1853. It is the report of the trustees
of Columbia College upon the establishment of a university system.
Among other things this report outlines, in accordance with the
ideas of the trustees, “the mission of the college.”
[Illustration: The Library, Columbia University]
This mission is, “to direct and superintend the mental and moral
culture. The design of a college is to make perfect the human
intellect in all its parts and functions; by means of a thorough
training of all the intellectual faculties, to obtain their full
development; and by the proper guidance of the moral functions,
to direct them to a proper exertion. To form the mind, in short,
is the high design of education as sought in a College Course.”
The report hereupon proceeds to note that unfortunately this
sentiment, “manifest and just” though it be, “does not meet with
universal sympathy or acquiescence.” On the contrary, the demand
for what is termed progressive knowledge ... and for fuller
instruction in what are called the useful and practical sciences,
is at variance with this fundamental idea. The public generally,
unaccustomed to look upon the mind except in connection with the
body, and to regard it as a machine for promoting the pleasures,
the conveniences, or the comforts of the latter, will not be
satisfied with a system of education in which they are unable to
perceive the direct connection between the knowledge imparted and
the bodily advantages to be gained. The committee therefore “think
that while they would retain the system having in view the most
perfect intellectual training, they might devise parallel courses,
having this design at the foundation, but still adapted to meet the
popular demand.”
We have here one of the early indications of “parallel courses”
in one of our institutions of higher learning as a concession to
popular demands. But this concession at Columbia was made before
the immense extension and development of modern natural, physical,
and industrial science. Education or culture in the early fifties
was something easy to define. It included logic, literature,
oratory, conic sections, and religion. Since that date, however,
the American undergraduate has discovered modern research work at
the German university. Cecil Rhodes has opened Oxford for American
students with his “golden key.” The American student has been
called upon to match with his technical ability the enormous and
rapid development of a new material civilization, and educational
institutions take color from the social and political media in
which they exist. In fact, it cannot be easily estimated how real
or how comprehensive a factor the college graduate has been in
guiding and shaping this practical and progressive awakening.
The American undergraduate is more than ever before contemporaneous
with all that is real and important in modern existence. He
is filled with enthusiasm for civic and social and religious
investigation and improvement. With self-reliant courage he works
his way through college, tutoring, waiting on table, and performing
other real services. He debates with zeal economics, immigration,
and labor questions. Indeed, the modern American university is
taking increasingly firmer hold upon the life of the nation. The
college graduate of fifty years ago was more or less a thing
apart. If he was strong in his literary studies, he was also weak
in his attachment to life itself, where education really has its
working arena. In comparison with him, the student to-day spends a
greater proportion of his time in the study of political science.
One feels the limitation of the modern undergraduate especially in
the sweep of his literary knowledge, and in his acquaintance with
abstract thought, art, and poetry. But when we see student and
professor working together on our American farms, bringing about
a new and higher type of rural life; when we find our mechanical
engineers not only in the mountains and on the Western prairies,
but in the heart of India or inland China or South Africa, building
there their bridges and railroad tunnels according to the ideas
seen in the vision of their new practical educational training,
we are bound to ask whether the modern undergraduate is not truly
interested in the deep aim of all true scholarship, namely, the
spiritual and concrete construction of life by means of ideas made
real. Ambassador Bryce’s opinion of the American universities
carries weight, and of them he has said:
If I may venture to state the impression which the
American universities have made upon me, I will say that
while of all the institutions of the country they are
those of which the American speaks most modestly, and
indeed deprecatingly, they are those which seem to be at
this moment making the swiftest progress, and to have
the brightest promise for the future. They are supplying
exactly those things which European cities have hitherto
found lacking to America; and they are contributing to her
political as well as to her contemplative life elements of
inestimable worth.
But since undergraduate training must deal not simply with the
theory of education, but also with the imperative demands and
conditions of a new time, there must be discovered practical ways
by which our undergraduates may save their literary ideals at
the same time that they enlarge their practical and progressive
knowledge; means by which they may discover literary, historical,
linguistic, and philosophical values without losing their
mathematics and their physical and material sciences.
To the end, therefore, of making cultural studies as strong,
attractive, and profitable to our undergraduates as practical and
scientific training, our institutions should train men of large
caliber to teach English and belles-lettres. They should discover
great teachers and inspiring personalities.
PERSONALITY OF GREAT TEACHERS
President Gilman of Johns Hopkins University took as his motto,
“Men before buildings.” The subject of securing great teachers for
students is perhaps the most vital topic which can be considered,
since from the point of view of undergraduates a professor, whether
teaching civil engineering or Greek, is invariably influential
because of what he is personally.
In a large university which I recently visited I was told that
there were three thousand students and five hundred instructors
and professors, an average of a professor to every six students.
Upon asking several of the undergraduates how many professors they
knew personally, I was somewhat astounded to find that less than a
dozen of these six hundred teachers came into personal contact with
the students outside of the classes. One graduate told me that he
had not been in the home of more than three professors during his
college course.
There are undoubtedly reasons for this lack of association between
the professors and the undergraduates. In a large university, the
demand upon the teacher for more work than he should rightfully
undertake, the ever-increasing interest of the student in college
affairs, with many other influences, are constantly presented as
difficulties in the way of the teacher’s close relationship with
the student. But the important point in this association between
student and professor is that in many cases the professor has
nothing vital and individual to give the undergraduate when he
meets him. In too many cases he is a dry and weary man, living
his life in books rather than in men. A. C. Benson has described
a Cambridge don in terms that at times we fear fit some college
professors of our own land. He sits “like a moulting condor in
a corner, or wanders seeking a receptacle for his information.”
The American college teacher has too often been chosen simply
because of his scholarship. Our institutions of learning have been
obsessed with the mere value of the degree of doctor of philosophy.
As a consequence, many a young professor is scholarly and expert
in his knowledge of his subject, but utterly without ability to
impart it with interest. He lacks driving force as well as guiding
and regulating force. He seems at times without the capacity for
real feeling. He is not alive to the issues of the time in which
he lives. He starts his subject a century behind the point of
view in which his scholars are interested. Too often, alas! he
misses the chief opportunity of a college teacher in not becoming
friendly with his undergraduates; for there is no comradeship like
the comradeship of letters, the comradeship of knowledge, the
comradeship of those whose lives are united in the higher aims of
serious education.
Letters have never lacked their fascination when they have been
embodied in the thought and personalities of great teachers. Albert
Harkness, with his face aglow with literary enthusiasm, reading
“Prometheus Bound,” in his lecture-room in the old University Hall
at Providence, is one of the unfading memories of my undergraduate
days. When Tennyson said, “I am sending my son not to Marlborough,
but to Bradley, the great teacher,” it was not a _subject_ he had
in mind, but a _personality_. In one institution which I visit,
virtually the entire undergraduate body elects botany. A student
said to me one day, “We do not care especially for botany, but
we would elect anything to be under Dr. ----.” Not long ago,
attending a college dinner at the University of Minnesota, I heard
a professor at my side lamenting the tendency to irreverence on the
part of American college men. While we were speaking, ex-President
Northrop came into the room, and the entire crowd of students were
on their feet in an instant, cheering their beloved president. One
of the undergraduates closed his remarks by saying that the deepest
impression of his college days had occurred in the chapel when
their honored president prayed; and he quoted the following verse:
When Prexy prays
Our heads all bow,
A sense of peace
Smooths every brow,
Our hearts, deep stirred,
No whisper raise
At chapel time
When Prexy prays.
THE PROFESSOR IN THE LECTURE-ROOM
The classroom presentation of the college professor is also highly
important. Many a subject is spoiled for a student because of
the pedantic, priggish, or solemn manner of the teacher. Many a
teacher is devoted to his subject and painstaking, but his lack of
knowledge as to the use of incident, epigram, and enticing speech
in presenting his subject, prevents his popularity and power as a
teacher. Woodrow Wilson says that he had been teaching for twenty
years before he discovered that the students forgot his facts,
but remembered his stories. We realize that tables of population,
weights, and measures, temperatures, birth-rates, and dimensions,
are at times necessary, but these should be used in the classroom
with moderation.
Too often a teacher takes for granted that he has an uninteresting
subject, and therefore gives up the task of making it attractive.
A professor of mathematics, endeavoring to evade the obligation
for good teaching, gave to a professor of chemistry, whose
lecture-room was always crowded with interested students, the
following reason for the unpopularity of his subject: “The trouble
with mathematics is that nothing ever happens. If, when an equation
is solved, it would blow up or give off a bad odor, I should get as
many students as you.” The real reason, however, was deeper than
the nature of his subject. It lay in the nature of the man. He did
not have the power to bring his subject into vital contact with
reality and with the life of his students.
The lecture plan also handicaps many a teacher in this important
task of getting near the student and drawing him out. The seminar
of our larger universities and graduate schools help much in
individualizing the students. Students may be talked to death. They
themselves often want to talk. An undergraduate in the South, after
hearing a professor who was without terminal facilities, told me
the old story of Josh Billings, who defined a bore as a man who
talked so much about himself that you couldn’t talk about yourself.
In many institutions the students also are forced to take too many
lectures. Their minds become jaded. Thinking is the last thing
they have power to do in the lecture-room. There is little desire
or opportunity for intellectual reaction; as one professor of a
Western university humorously remarked:
They do not listen, however attentive or orderly they may
be. The bell rings, and a troop of tired-looking boys,
followed perhaps by a larger number of meek-eyed girls,
file into the classroom, sit down, remove the expressions
from their faces, open their note-books on the broad
chair-arms, and receive. It is about as inspiring an
audience as a room full of phonographs holding up their
brass trumpets.
TWO WAYS OF TEACHING HISTORY