Radcliffe College - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Baccalaureate Address S B misery, new causes are operant on every side! It is absurd for women to study ancient Anglo-Saxon literature and Greek phi- losophy when they know nothing of the method by which a small ring of business men can succeed in controlling a city, in making the mayor and council its puppets, and all their husbands and brothers as putty in its hands. They are taught theories and forms rather than realities,-that it is more important to get the form beautiful than to have worth in the substance. It is not entirely due to the kind of things taught, however. Even in the professional school and technical school, where educa- tion is practical, there are few baptized men and women. They keep at work more than the pupils in college, but because of the motive of earning their daily bread. It is continually brought home to them, If you do not work you will starve? if you do you will get richlv But the work is drudgery. Men do not go tothe medical school always led by the impulse to cut out tumors or give quinine to fever patients. lt is not a passionate thirst for truth that takes the law student through a volume on torts or sets him looking up a thousand cases of ancient English law. nor is it a real devotion to that art that leads a girl to study housekeeping or dressmaking. 'l'hey work to get money or to win success, and because of this the work that they do is drudgery to them and halt their power of usefulness is lost. The old education took it for granted that men were not inter- ested in learning to know. lt knew that it is itnpossible to get any- thing into the mind without attention. lt felt that it was necessary that every tuan should have certain essentials tif information which he would not want to have. lt believed that tliese must lie pound- ed in through the thick skull and injected with a ncetllc lietteittll the mental cuticle. lt assumed that a boy-'s attention would lie on other things than his studies.-he would be looking out of the window at a dog or a bird's nest. lt believed. however. that with the aid ot a birchen rod his attention could be withdrawn from the bird and held down to the quality of a l.atiu syllable, or the rule in tireek grammar for a past condition contrary to fact. lts etitect was to compel tnen to accept' certain cations about art. certain opinions about literature. certain creeds in religion, certain Clhlitlll- in so- ciety. livery vapid imitation of classic form must lie admired. .Xu artist recently stated that all men to-day judge truly will art rave those who have been educated in it. Such education results in making every one artiticial. lt is pathetic to see people at the Symphouy or the .Yrt tiallery going into raptures -wer things that 7

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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

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Baccalaureate Address f gf e 3 no normal human being could possibly like, because they have been told they ought to do so. They read books which are absolutely dull and uninteresting and tell every one how charming they are, because some literary person has admired them. They turn from some other book, that has struck into the very most vital roots of life, with horror, because some conventional person has raised his evebrows at it. Such educated folk become very clever. Thereare ciertain so-called canons of good taste or classicism which they have at their tongue's end. If a thing conforms, they know it 1n at mo- ment and call it admirable and wonderful,-if it does not, it is declared hopeless. They do not realize that what they enjoy is their own cleverness in applying the standard and not any worth in the thing itself. A Modern education is swinging away from the enforcement of conformity to the opposite extreme of individualism,-you must not force a man to learn anything, it says, his feelings must be his guideg let him follow his bent. They forget that the first steps in any new branch of knowledge are dull and hard and must be enforced by artificial stimulus until interest awakes. Very few enjoy five-finger exercises in any branch of knowledge, aft-er they have pounded away for months they acquire the freedom and joy of full self-expression in some great sonata. It is so with every- thing. It is possible that the students of our universities might even be interested in religion if they were compelled to listen to enough of it to find out what it was like! The elective system has its great dangers, from the kindergarten period up through that of the university. The young woman of to-day says to her professor, Interest me, or I Won't listen 5 the public says to the ne-wspaper, Excite me, or I won't read g the congregation says to the minis- ter, Move me, or I won't come l There is no disposition to do the hard, faithful work that is requisite to true education. We find certain universities engaging tuto-rs to pro-be into the mind of de- linquent and uninterested scholars for some evidence of intelligence and interest in something with which he can connect the studies of his department. The self within is a network ofninterests and de- sires, like a mesh of live wires. I cannot tell what your self,-that is to say, what your interests are. If I am. speaking to you, I have to probe around with various illustrations to discover. You may be interested in beetles, or postage stamps, or babies, or foreign mis- sions. You sit there, dully thinking about catching the trolley car for.home, until in some way the teacher strikes a vital interest,- a live wire,-then the eyes brighten and you look alive, until at 8