University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

Page 21 text:

LEE PAUL Smc Dean of the College THE COLLEGE There is an old belief, older even than the precepts in the Scriptures, to the effect that one who seeks a highly desired end may miss it, but one who does not seek it too directly, may find it. This idea, so it seems to me, applies to collegiate study. If one goes to college with an idea that here is a royal and direct road to success in life, or, with a less diffusive aim, that here is surely a way to learn what is necessary about history, and mathematics, and government, and all these other fields that make up our civilization, if one does this, I say, I fear that he will really miss what he is trying to find. One cannot say, I am now going to allow myself four years in which to become more resourceful, more appreciative, more tole1'- ant-in short, more wise. No, it just is not to be done that way. One must start at the beginning with a determination to approach the subject that is before him with his own mind. He must attach to every statement that he reads or hears a series of questions. Wliat he reads or hears may be true, but he must doubt it long enough to satisfy himself that it fits on to his own mental background. Then he must go further-he must build up his own new relations, new to him, at least. He must put all of him- self into the matter at hand. If it is mathematics, he must see how the author arrives at proofs, he must work the problems assigned but not stop there, he must make up his own problems, he must reach out and formu- late new relations. It is his mathematical ability that is being sounded. Surely, just following the author, and doing what the author suggests is no real education at all. lVlaybe he can never contribute much to any great moment. No matter. His own thinking is the tiny grain of gold in the vast pile of well nigh useless sand. Witliolit that grain, there is little education of any permanent value. And, so, at the end, one will have reached his goal, without having steered directly toward it. I9