Mansfield University - Carontawan Yearbook (Mansfield, PA)

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A Message From Mansfield ' s Contribution to Democratic Living In a real sense the college at Mans- field is a social laboratory in which stu- dents participate in democratic living. With participation and self expression as the keynote, the students make many of their own decisions and assume responsi- bility for the consequences of those de- cisions. Underlying the civic life of the College is the ideal of individual as well as social obligation whereby members are answerable to themselves and to the college community for their daily deeds and efforts. Through such pursuits as self-gov- ernment, dramatics, professional fratern- ities and sororities, and other group ac- tivities, as well as through the regular program of instruction, students acquire the necessary abilities, attitudes and ap- preciations for effective social and pro- fessional living. Professional experience and skill are gained simultaneously with social experience. Students learn to live while they prepare to serve. The fundamental objective of the program at Mansfield is to afford exten- sive and intensive opportunities for stu- dents — prospective teachers — to develop a well-rounded personality. An enthus- iastic, cheerful and noble life lived in the presence of children and youth in our public schools will teach more effectively than any words or mere formal tech- niques. The appreciation of this truth gives emphasis to those elements of college life which encourage students to live their highest and best, to become worthy of their great calling, and to be — by their character, industry, and charity — shining examples to all with whom they come in contact. LESTER K. ADE

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1 U II 11 i Lester

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A. T. BELKNAP Modern democracy, the outgrowth of many centuries of hard and bitter experience of living together in which men have slowly learned both to obey and to command, is a practical recognition of individual dif- ferences in human beings whereby the superior powers of superior indivi- duals may be used by them and by their fellows consciously, willingly and cheerfully for the mutual advantage of all. The practical blending of initiative and conformity with the proper adjustment of conflicting wills and varying talents to mutual necessities whether in a Norse ship, an Anglo-Saxon village, an American town, a European State, or a modern college is democracy. Like a ship, any democracy needs both captain and crew. For a true democracy all must lead and all must follow as they are able. Obedience and initiative are equally needed. The resulting conflict of patterns which is the history of the world has gradually produced the current frame of democracy in its evolution, past, present and future to- ward a more useful and comfortable human society. As longer time is spent now in school, years which other generations spent in work and in war, it becomes constantly more important to have in education that give- and-take which produces and which is democracy. This is not a model ' democracy, falsely so-called where the model has been sometimes defined as a little imitiation of the real thing , not a liberty which is license, nor fruitless bolsheviki player camouflaging tyranny, but real democracy which is the use of the common wisdom of the common mind working for the common welfare. Here not only in state and church, but in business, edu- cation and social life, everywhere, government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. This is a soundly democratic and progressive philosophy of education and life based on mutual good will, trust and con- fidence, respect and assistance which by the blessing of God shall never perish from the earth.