Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 11 required to furnish a certain amount of money, about seventy dollars. The condition of life of these young people often makes this payment a question of real sacrifice, and of re- trenchment of the few comforts afforded by a small salary. And what more reliable guarantee of earnestness could be asked? In the hope of bettering his position and income the young student saves enough to enable him to satisfy his ambition. The cost is not merely one of money, but of much spare time and rest. After such a sacrifice, is it likely that the young man or woman in question will lose time or neg- lect the least of the opportunities offered by the correspond- ence schools? The directors of these schools, therefore, find their pupils inspired with an eagerness for work and a steadfastness of purpose which the system itself has done nothing to arouse. And even when possessed of these ideal conditions the cor- respondence schools, we think, do not make the most profit- able use of them. The student, no matter how earnest he be, may, when left to work out his own difficulties, spend long hours of earnest application over a point v hich could and should have been cleared briefly by a personal explana- tion of a teacher. And when at last the student arrives at some solution of his task, he is left in doubt as to the correct- ness of his decision. Not until his papers are returned to him can he have any satisfactory judgment of his labor. Even at this point, however, his doubt may not be cleared or the rule given cannot be applied by him because of his in- ability to perceive the connection between his work and the written directions. He cannot, of himself, proceed any further than the paper sent him directs, and if he is an earnest and sensible student he will not proceed vAth new work until his difficulties with the old are cleared away to his satis- faction. But this requires more time and delay in mails, and in the interval a serious, ambitious brain is working

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10 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL system gives further evidence of its success. The system whose offices are now found in all parts of the globe owes its beginning to the editor of the Shenandoah Herald, Thomas J. Foster. From the dingy office of a country newspaper in 1872 the I. C. S. has now spread over the entire United States and penetrated beyond into South Africa, New Zealand, Aus- tralia and India. Its students today are numbered by the thousand and its expenses of last year ($1,500,000) can give us a fair estimate of its financial standing. Its method is described in the title “ Correspondence School.” The applicant forwards his application for in- struction in a certain branch of a trade, and thus opens up the correspondence by which he is to be trained. Theme papers bearing on his subject are mailed, worked out by the pupil and remailed to the Scranton headquarters for correc- tion. With the corrected copy of the theme is sent another set of questions or problems, the more or less advanced, as the former specimen of the student seemed to warrant. And at last, after a certain number of mails have passed between teachers and pupils, the diploma of the I. C. S. is forwarded as a guarantee to the world of satisfactory work done on the part of the learner. As the value of the system for practical business training has been established, the directors not un- frequently are able to start their graduates in a lucrative position. Business men, rather than run the risk of choosing haphazardly from the ordinary run of applicants, prefer to test the trained man advertised by the I. C. S., and this in- fluence in the hands of the directors of the schools is a very potent factor in their success. Yet perhaps the keynote of the unprecedented prosperity of the correspondence schools is the ideal condition under which they labor. Their students are recruited, as a rule, from the working classes. The young man or woman intending to follow a course is

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12 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL blindly and in vain. What the same effort could accomplish under the personal direction of a living and speaking teacher there is no need of emphasizing. The doubt would be pro- posed at once, discussed, explained by the teacher and at last cleared for the student, whose intellect would then be pre- pared for new and more arduous v ork. So in saying that the I. C. S. does not make the best possible use of its advan- tages, or even does not accomplish with them as much as a living teacher could, is not, we feel confident, arraigning this system of schools too severely. And as for the possibility of their ever replacing education, it is too improbable to discuss very seriously. The best which the I. C. S. can produce, or ever aims to produce, is a workman well informed in the common requirements of his trade. He is scarcely well trained, as that word implies the personal supervision of a living teacher, who corrects and directs until his pupil has acquired for himself the knowl- edge or practical habit for which he is being trained. And to maintain that the correspondence schools are a source of liberal education, or guide the mind along any broad lines of culture, is to show the absurdity of the thought in its very expression. There is no development of the three great facul- ties in correspondence schools, and as far as can be judged from its circulars there is no attempt at such development. The aim of the system, as recorded, in the beginning, is “ to raise salaries.” It imparts to each student limited knowl- edge of a very limfited subject, and, v hile the I. C. S. may turn out a reliable steam fitter or bookkeeper, the system will labor in vain to produce those two choicest specimens of human nature, the true product of education — the gentleman and the scholar. Edwin L. Leonard, ’10.