University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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zines might be augmented by courses of lectures on the rise and progress of universities, and especially on the history of our own University and State. More- over, is it merely a fond dream that the day will come when there will be not only fraternity conventions and meetings of university presidents, but also con- gresses of students and faculties combined into one grand whole of co-workers in the same noble cause ? Winning our way steadily upward toward the highlands of personal and social ethics, discerning with ever increasing clearness of vision what we have been, are, and ought to be as the University of California, we shall gradually give to our university spirit something of the purposeful self-activity, creative self-determina- tion, and calm self-mastery, that are the marks of a mature, unified, forceful personality. That every member of our university community should ever reach this stage of social self-consciousness is of course not to be expected. Freshmen and Sophomores are doing well if they sit up and take notice of the atmosphere they breathe. Not every one can be a university expert; and the qualities for leadership in thought or action the gods have seen fit to reserve for a few. But there is a vast difference between a university despotism and a republic of university minds. Only the latter conception is worthy of university men and women. This alone is in keeping with the larger civic life of which we are a part. This alone will fit graduates of state universities for the leadership which the passing of the political hegemony from the East to the West will inevitably thrust upon them. This alone can help us to realize that greater university we are hoping and striving for, a university so great as to make even the architectural glory that is to be ours an inadequate symbol of our university spirit. ALEXIS F. LAXGE. -.

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intentions, is always trying to boom his university without knowing what he is booming, what he ought to boom, to what end he is booming, and who feels very sad perhaps because his university pours out showers of blessing without stage thunder and lightning for the gallery gods of the world. Rational and discriminating, the university spirit is guided by the historic sense which no genuine university student is without. As university men and women we are aware of the past in the present; we are conscious, dimly though it be, of walking in the ways of predecessors. From the acts of the Regents to the first uncertain steps of a freshman, from the ceremonies of matriculation to the sym- bolic rites of Class Day, nowhere does tradition entirely release its hold ; nowhere is there a safe path to the new except through the old. Until a certain well- known structure shall possess the inherited emotional value a Yale man associates with his fence, we shall always in the depths of our hearts prefer to sit on some- thing else. We realize, too, that this continuity of life is our very own. The University of California is not Harvard, nor Yale, nor Michigan. Neither is it an applied definition. It came into existence with an individuality of its own, acquired a strength of its own, and slowly matured a character of its own, and all this in and through a vital union with a commonwealth of its own, a union so vital that without it neither University nor State can attain to full stature. Our past, our present, our future, all are indissolubly connected with what our State is, has been, and will be. It is from this point of view we need to catch a glimpse of ourselves if our university spirit is to have any meaning and purposeful direction. And a professor from elsewhere must do more than catch a glimpse. As long as he thinks, and feels, and talks, and acts like an alien his usefulness is sadly impaired, no matter how yellow his jacket or how gorgeous his feathers. We cannot, however, know ourselves as a collective personality with a soul of our own, without realizing that our faces are set toward a goal common to other universities, although the paths leading thither differ and will differ as long as men and communities are not alike. One university may lay special stress on training those that are born men to that which is human ; another may make the distribution of the inherited treasures of knowledge its chief function; a third may aim chiefly at teaching how to get at the truth and how to add to it, still, according to the best that has been thought and said concerning universities, each is only emphasizing one aspect of the same organized university idea, and perhaps must do so if it is to be true to its day and generation. To be instructed by that idea is therefore as essential to the university spirit as knowledge of what citizenship means is to the civic spirit. The very name that we bear should always make it impossible for us to follow every new tin horn that toots among us or to go through the motions of university men and women in stupid, provincial self-satisfaction. To strive for clear and coherent university ideas is one of the duties we owe to ourselves as individuals and as citizens of our University, of our country, and of the world. For this end the California Union was founded. As was recently suggested, something similar to the Oxford Union wtiuld doubtless advance us in the same direction if wisely adapted to our conditions. The good services rendered by our university papers and maga- 12

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The University as a Part of the Public School System. jpHERE is nothing which more sharply distinguishes American educational Q) systems from those of Europe than the close connection which is here maintained between the Universities and the people ' s schools, or schools of elementary grade. In fact, many of our universities are people ' s schools in the best sense of the term. And there is, I think, no part of our land where the several grades of schools are more closely in touch one with another, from the lowest to the highest, than in this State of California. This community of educational interests manifests itself in some curious ways. We find children in the grammar grades who have figured out the class in which they may hope to graduate from the University, and who add accordingly, it may be, ' 08 to their names. We hear the senior year in college spoken of as the sixteenth grade of the public school course. High school pupils not infre- quently develop into strong partisans of this or that university, and may be seen on the day of the annual foot-ball game wearing blue-and-gold or cardinal with all the loyalty of a full-fledged collegian. The accrediting system, which began in a voluntary relation between the University and the high schools, has extended itself in several directions. In some counties, pupils who have completed the course of certain accredited grammar schools are admitted to the high schools without examination. A county high school is found to occupy a position, with reference to the grammar schools, somewhat analogous to that in which the University stands with reference to the high schools. I do not think it will be possible in the future to write any adequate history of civilization in California without taking some account of this intimate connection which has grown up between the several parts of our system of public instruc- tion. Professor George H. Cliif, the historian of the Central High School of Phila- delphia, has said of that school that one of the most important results of its establishment was the influence which it exerted upon the other schools of the city. It led to the general elevation of the standard of instruction in the grammar schools. It stimulated the pupils in those schools. Prior to the establishment of the High School, he says, the other schools of the city often suffered from lack of pupils ; and up to 1837, the year in which the High School was founded, the largest number of pupils in the public schools was about 7,000. By the end of 1843, however, not only were all the schools filled, but there were many candi- dates awaiting admission, while the number in attendance had risen to nearly 35,000. Other writers have noticed similar advantages arising from a close connection between the lower schools and higher institutions established as a part of the same system. It has an invigorating effect upon all the lower grades of instruction to have the system of which they form a part lead up to the higher learning, with no absolute limit to progress at any point. In fact, the elementary schools do not fully come into their own until in some way or other a clear path is opened up from them into the boundless fields of human culture and learning. It 14