Kenyon College - Reveille Yearbook (Gambier, OH)

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Kososing River Twenty-nine

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ito ftlemoriam WILLIAM RAY ASHFORD The Faunce is dead. How easy it is to utter these words, hut how difficult it is to comprehend their mean inp. To all of us who knew him (and who among us did not?) it is inronreivahle that he is gone. It is safe to say that in the long history of this college no other man ever meant so many things to so many people. True, many have been more famous, many have been more distinguished, and many have been more scholarly; hut every Kenyon man from 1924 to 1954 knew and loved this man for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. Ray Ashford was truly the Mr. Chips of Kenyon College. He knew more about all of the things that together make Kenyon what it is than anv man alive. Diverse were his interests and many were his activities. What organization on this campus during the past thirty years has not in some way been affected by this man,— the Dramatic Club, The Hill Players, The Kenyon Klan, the Church, the Library. And the list could go on and on. No one else had so many friends. His greatest joys came fom his associations with the students. No fra- ternity party was complete unless Fauncy was there. He taught many of us our Spanish or our French or our Italian when we entered, and he called our names in Latin as we left. It has often been said that one was not a real Kenyon man until he had had the Fauncc for a class. Give my regards to Rocky; Rcmemlicr me to Fauncy, too.” This simple song, sung every Sunday in the Com- mons. illustrates the feeling of Kenyon men for Dr. shford. lb- has become a legend. And he will become even more of a legend as the years go by. The stories about him are many: the story of how he was tied to a tree when initiated into Psi Upsilon; the story of how the cow was placed in his classroom; the story of his lirst motorcycle ride; the story of how he called his favorite students ‘stupid’. And there are hundreds more. Whenever Kenyon men gather Fauncy stories always will be related. No one hated sadness and mourning more than he. Although he is gone in Iwdy he is still very much with us in spirit. . . Remember me to Fauncy, too. I.et the words ring out and the song go on as long as there is a Kenyon. John F. Furmss, Jr. And see a river like Kokosing, In meadows sweet with asphodel. II here memory dwells dear past supposing, Farewell, old Kenyon, fare thee ivell .... T wenty-eight

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THEY LAUGHED WHEN I SAT DOWN TO PLAY When the President asked me. several months ago, to make this Interruption In your day. I at once boican to hope for the inspira- tion of a subject. That Lope was fruitless, as it deserved to be. and 1 must try to draw yet one more note from the old string. The State of California announces that it must quickly recruit 172.000 new public school teachers. So small a city as Mount Ver- non speaks of the Imminent need for seventy additional teachers. Every other state and city tells the same talc. Yet the number of college students who are preparing to be high school teachers of science has dropped by fifty per cent In the last live years. Some- body has said that If. for several years, one half of all college graduates became public school teachers, we would still be short by many thousands. A small school of engineering In a nearby state will this spring Sraduate sixty men. when a friend of mine, a representative of a eavy Industry, visited that school last winter, he learned that 128 Industries had applied for the services of those sixty men. When that same friend went to the Georgia Institute of Technology to Interview seniors, he found that eight hundred other firms had done the same. You will understand this situation better for know- ing that In 195« Industry needed 30.000 engineers; only 18.000 were graduated. In that same year, only 200 advanced degrees were awarded In physics; of those men. only half made physics their profession. In 1949, the medical schools were for a variety of reasons be- sieged with applicants for admission; for each place In the schools, five or six applicants presented themselves. This year. In ominous contrast, there were only two applicants for each place. Such a decline in numbers obviously means a decline In quality. Mean- while the national population Increases, and with It the need for physicians. The Episcopal diocese of Ohio would like to fill this year more than twenty clerical posts; eleven men are available. To estimate the needs of the Church In the nation Is not easy; It seems likely, however, that there Is room for some 5000-8000 clergy- men. Currently wc are ordaining about 400 yearly. Your own knowledge will doubtless supply comparable figures for other trades and professions and will justify tny assertion of the national need for educated persons. Those persons the colleges and universities nre asked to provide. But prospective physicians, clergymen, teachers, and engineer make ns you see a small pro- portion of our collegiate enrollment. The colleges and universities are called upon for many more sorts both of education and training. In response to that call, the colleges and universities have Insti- tuted courses, departments, and colleges In pharmacy, journalism, agriculture, hotel management, nursing, business administration, home economics, You may add subjects at will. It would be dif- ficult. perhaps Impossible, to think of an occupation or an activity which Is not. at one college or another, the subject of study leading to an academic degree. The attractiveness of these ventures In ''education'' Is manifest by current enrollment In what are called Institutions of higher learning. In those Institutions, two and a half million persons are enrolled. And. as I have Indicated, pressure Is on these young per- sons to fit themselves as speedily as possible for practical purposes. By way of training them, our Institutions of higher learning offer courses—what I nm about to say comes not from my Imagining but from the pages of current university catalogs—our Institutions of higher learning offer courses In: Advanced radio announcing Badio and television advertising Conference Leadership Training (this In Business Administration! Upholstery Teaching moral and spiritual values In the public schools Literature for High School Students: reading of materials suitable for use In extensive reading programs in secondary schools I cite these particular courses for their patent absurdity and to emphasize the absurdity of calling them higher unless one Is able to show what they are higher than. One might suppose that for the teaching of moral and spiritual values In public schools the teacher ought himself to be acquainted with those values by ex- perience and by deep study of religious, philosophical, historical, and literary texts. One might suppose that for true leadership of conferences, n man ought to bring to the table a logical mind, a deep knowledge of the problem being discussed, some convictions. But the assumption of all these courses seems to be that a stained ply-wood veneer is as good as mahogany: that superficial training In skills obviates the need for genuine learning. Thirty To suggest that all vocational courses are equally absurd would be sinful. To suggest that they are unnecessary would be stupid. But this much I am willing to suggest, that practical training as distinguished from education Is always more like the veneer tnan like the mahogany. That it trains men to do again what has been often done before; that in the degree that It Is Immediately prac- tical. In the same degree Is it superficial. It is an undertaking, as Abraham Flexner said, to tell people how who mainly do not know what. To those persons who have enrolled In the colleges and univer- sities for limited vocational purposes, add the inestimable number who have enrolled in compliance with the national admiration of what is indiscriminately called a college education . Though we cannot say how many of these persons are. their ubiquity is revealed by the courses of study that have been created for them. To name the courses Is. I know, a popular pastime among us, and I will for- flvc you if you no longer find it amusing. These, too. I have drawn rom current catalogs: Food for Special Occasions: Preparation of attractive and ap- petizing dishes to help the homemaker In planning buffet suppers, receptions, picnics. Laboratory four hours. Selection of Costume and Management of the Wardrobe: Design- ing costumes to meet individual needs. Lecture one hour, laboratory four hours. Folk, tap. and social dancing Camping in education Orientation to University Study (l.e. the studies listed above): two semester . One course I should perhaps have named in my first list, but I save It for a category of its own: Entymology. The study of words. One middle-western university recently achieved the notoriety of the weekly news magazines for Its course in Conversation; a teacher at another university was recently celebrated for her course In proper use of the telephone. She teaches collegiate young per- sons to speak slowly and distinctly; she teaches them how to dial long distance and how to use the directory. Whether the teachers of conversation and of telephoning create in their disciples sound learning, good sense, and a will to virtue the magazines do not say. Presumably they do. however, for the courses arc stepping-stone to academic degrees. Without in the least knowing whether It Is true. I suspect that these two categoric of persons—those who seek Immediately prac- tical training and those who seek the vaguely named college edu- cation —comprise the majority of our two and a half million under- Kraduates. Where did these persons prepare themselves for these Igher studies? In the public high schools, where graduates of these same universities and colleges taught them metal shop, com- munity civics, typing, car driving, business English. World History, and salesmanship. The high school made available other things, to be sure—quick bites of foreign languages, seldom chewed and rarely digested: some science—too often general science ; some mathe- matics; a rudimentary acquaintance with the mother tongue. The instruction was offered by underpaid, overworked, and Ill-educated teachers, whose own claims to learning arc largely founded on methods courses In the schools of Education. It is not I who say. but o distinguished public school administrator who repeated last week: that our high schools arc designed to deal with the average and the below average student; that they stress mediocrity and depress superiority. Abraham Flexner, speaking of the quality of achievement in our high schools, said that no nation has ever so completely deceived Itself . Are we assured by a high school diploma that the recipient can write and speak English with moder- ate accuracy: that at eighteen he can read a French or German page; that his knowledge of our national past enables him to par- ticipate intelligently In current affairs: that there has been aroused In him a respect for learning or a wish to attain it? Yet on the pith of this green sapling Institutions of higher learn- ing undertake to glue the veneer of vocationallsm or of popular culture. The annual result is thousands of degreed persons of whom some have been trained to one Important Job or another; of whom many more have been poorly trained for the conduct of private life. Meantime the world s problems grow apace. Bandung. Saigon, and Taiwan are neighbors whose problems are ours. Our whole political, social, and religious structure is threatened by neo-bar- barism from without and by neo-feudalism from within. Shall we commit the problems of such a world to fire-new experts In public relations, business English, and advanced radio announcing? While the geographical horizon contracts, the horizons of science have been pushed nearly Into Infinity, and the men who shall lead us toward them will not be the products of hand-to mouth techno- logical training. We need Pasteurs. Darwins, and Mendels: we need Newtons. Einsteins. Oppenheimers. and even the most efficient In- stitutions of higher learning have not yet introduced courses that will produce them In three or four semesters. We need Burkes. Jefferson . Marxes: we need Miltons. Goethes. Hawthornes. We need deeply learned men; wc need institutions that can nurture them: wc need the scholar-teachers who can Inspire them. We have equal need of millions of men who. If they fall short of these high names, have nevertheless on awareness of true learning, who value it. who are willing to be guided by It. If my description of the educational system is one-quarter Just, we are not getting them, or are getting them In numbers so small as quite to be lost in our swelling population. True, there is the Institute at Princeton with Its hundred Fel- lows. True, there arc graduate schools here and there and research institutes here and therethat harbor a few dedicated men and thclr few dedicated pupils. There Is not a college. I suspect, however small or obscure, that docs not have on its staff a man or men who are still, among the press and distractions of the Job. seriously prosecuting their studies. You arc personally acquainted with a small number. But again I say they are too few. too harried, and too little respected to make the necessary inroads on the national distrust of learning, the national addiction to superficial practicality. n °na‘ complacent assumption of superiority. I was told as a fn»d thc ChlnMO developed a water wheel centuries ago; and that during centuries each generation reproduced the wheel The Image was created In my mind of a wheel that turned forever on ■ » . but th“ went nowhere. Rote learning, slapdash training of the Ignorant, single-hearted devotion to the immediately prac- Vnal thV?T . 1 neglect of theoretical learning—these 2 Lr.c™ln,d me tf,at whccl 1 have ‘nce read of the man who. 8J.°r c?riKWO ?. ' ,unc°vered a treasure, which he threw “'Kjy »Hl5 neighbor, digging for treasure. Ignored the worms. MaK«z«ne for April proclaims a national need for research and Invention. At the same time, it assures readers that one doesn t need what It calls long-haired scientific degrees or I