Radcliffe College - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Baccalaureate Address S G do. This enables us to develop all the latent power we have and to use the mind and ability of every individual for the progress of society and the state. If it does not yet, it will when these principles are fully carried out! The public schools and colleges are the institutions upon which the prosperity and power of America depend. Some will point to our factories and mills as the source of prosperity. but here is a greater factory,-one for the manufacture of American citizens. They are wonderful mills,-these that are erected in every ward. in every suburb! I-lere on the warp of the brain cells of a hundred thousand scholars and students the mind of America is being woven from the threads of human knowledge! A wonderful mesh it is! I-lere at the bottom is the tough fiber of mathematics, woven in that every judgment may be accurate: here is the rainbow thread of science, connecting each mind with all things in heaven and earth and sea, in such fashion that it can use them wisely: here is the silken thread of history, drawn from the mighty men and great insti- tutions of the past: here is the spun gold of literature,-the highest thought of the race in its most beautiful forms. gleaming here and there through the fabric. l-low silently the wheels turn and the wonderful work goes on, while loyal men and women stand at their posts and guide the thread and pluck out the knots and splice the broken flier with unwearying skill and a devotion that knows no limits, for pay often less than that of a factory hand. There is no work in all the world that is greater or nobler or that tells more in the destiny of the human race. Never was such a work done in the world's history. Some of them take minds filled with bitter prejudice, with the echo of strange tongues. shadowed by the ignorance of centuries, darkened with superstition and error. help- less in face of forces of nature that have never been understood.-- and they tui'n out young men and young women in sympathetic relation with the great universe in which they move, working har- moniously each with his fellow for the good til- all. This is the first thing that they do,- they train men to know something. lfdueation has three aims. liirstu to train men to know sotltelllltlg. Second. to train men to do something: and third, to train men to be sltlllr- thing. 'l'he ideal education nmst train us to know enough of every- thing in order to work in cooperation with others and to have some point of sympathetic contact with everv other man. ln the second place. it must tfltlll us to some one thing thoroughly. and. it possible. better than any one else. .Xnd in the third place it nmst tram tls to be something. XYe call that something by ditierent names. Some f 5

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Baccalaureate Address 5 a Q We see it described in the book of Acts. He told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem and there think .over what they had seen and heard of Him and that thus the baptism would come., There they sat in their upper room day after- day, repeating to one another the words that He had spoken, recalling the image of Him' as they had seen Him so often. And as they dwelt. upon these things all of Da sudden it came,-as the rushing of a mighty wind that 'swept their souls, as leaping tongues of flame .that played upon their minds,- at last they saw to the heart of things. They saw the whole World as Christ saw it,-to be God's world, they saw all men, no matter how far they wandered in darkness, as Christ saw them-,-as the Father's children and their brothers, they 'knew themselvesto be what Christ had told them they were,-His ambassadors, sons o-f the Father, upon whom rested His power,-fand they went fo-rth with a great passion burning in their hearts, that would not let them rest or turn aside until they should have brought to- all the world their Master's message and the power of His love! lt was this fire that burned in their minds, that gave new sight, to their eyes, new hearing to their ears, new skill to their hands,--so that wherever they went they brought knowledge and life and the spirit of their Master! It is the spirit of Jesus Christ that has been the great dynamic in the world's. education,-the spirit that seeks the truth fearlessly and applies it lovingly. Literature, science, and edu- cation have died out in every nation, save where the touch of Christ has been felt. Education has become a mere mummy-cloth, in which inenis minds have been swathed like corpses, in all p-agan nations. Just as often as the Church has prisone-d men's minds in the mesh of her creeds, and institutionalism has shackled them by her cus- toms and prejudices, some man has raised the cry,- Back to Christ, and as the world has felt again the touch of His spirit, it has shaken itself free and stood forth alive and redeemed! At the touch of Christ an ignorant man acquires learning and an unedu- cated man, such as Mr. Moody, beco-mes the- founder of great insti- tutions of learning. What America is to-day we o-we to that spirit of truth. The nations which have lived the closest to the spirit of the New Testament have the mastery of the world because. they stand for free educatio-n. The principle up-on which American democracy is founded is that each man must learn to know enough of everything to fit him to- cooperate with others in working for all, and to come into sympathetic contact with every man he meets. This is citizenship. We also believe that every man must have a fair chance to learn to do thoroughly the thing he is best fitted to 'G 4

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Baccalaureate Address 3 a i S call it an honest workingwomang some a lady, some a good citizen, some simply a Christiang but at bottom it 1S very nearly the same thing. , . The school not only teaches its pupils to know enough of every- thing so as to rise above the barriers of preyudice and ignorance and understand each other and work in harmony and cooperate with other men and with all God's uniyerse,-it also teaches them to be something. lt is continuallyiprinting. on formless soul-stuff the great ideals of the race. lt is throwing upon the. sensitive plate of the mind image after image of our truest men in their noblest moments.-of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and Washington at.Valley Forge, of Grant and Franklin, of Hancock and Adams, -until there grows out, photographed upon their minds, a great composite of the ideal American, - of the man who would sacrifice pleasure and self- interest for the nation, of the man who would trust himself abso- lutely to the right and to God, who would venture all for the sake of justice and honor,-until that image is stamped into the very tiher of the mind, and every word and deed that emanates from that mind bears in some measure its impress. At present our education, in spite of progress, has certain defects. The chief defect is that it is an unbaptized education. It is fre- quently true that pupils have to be castigated into learning by threats and penalties, or coaxed into it with sugar plums. It is no-t the form of Truth that beckons them, but a vis a tergo that im- pels them. The motive of education is wrong. I cannot speak for women, but it is not always a passion for truth that impels the modern youth to college, as once in the days of the revival of learn- ing, when thousands gathered at such sacrifice at the feet of every learned man. To-day a man goes to college to gain social prestigeg he goes to make friends, the best education he gets in college comes not so much from the curriculum as through his relations with his classmates and through his sports. l-le learns to play fair, to sacri- Hee self to the public good, to master personal feeling, to despise snobbery, to share the common fare with men of all sorts, and every such great lesson of citizenship, not as is intended, from history and literature, but. on the athletic field, at the training table, in the club, in college politics.. The lack of interest in study is particularly due to the kind of things taught because they are tho-ught necessary to culture. Plupils are .taught dead languages, the history of dead men, dead issues, ancient institutions, decayed governments, sins of the. past! All the time the world is full of live men, modern sins which no one understands, new conditions present new types of 6