Kenyon College - Reveille Yearbook (Gambier, OH)

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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

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Kososing River Twenty-nine

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noerutvc laboratories in which to work. American Ingenuity, it »j««ts. Will suffice. The article then specifies some of the national 6J$5, how to make shoes all in one piece: how to make clothes without laborious sewing: how to Improve the safety pin. An article m Collier's recently called for similar advances. Again I ask you to i -oport from your experience my notion of the popular press, that it r.t« the nation a wholly distorted view of what constitutes learning ind achievement: that It exalts the obvious, the practical, and of course the commercial at the expense of the difficult, the funda- mental. the sound. Those articles, one wouldn't l e surprised to learn, were written by persons who had taken a university degree in nasarme article writing. Emerson once remarked that our politics Is a poor patching, and srtued that there would be less patching If there were more edu- cing. What might he now say. when everybody lx being edu- cated in the high schools and mounting millions in the universities? What patching might he see! Our national government, as you know, became aware from time to time of the atrocious style of thdr letters and publications, of the gobbledcgook. This time they arc combatting It with n pamphlet that urges governmental em- ployees to put aside their turgidities and write simply and natu- rally. Is simple and natural writing an art to Le learned by admonition? Tne City of New York is about to institute a course tor police that will encourage them In “tolerant human relations . The training, says Mayor Wagner, will utilize the most advanced methods of instruction . I like to imagine what that means—That the Instructor will be one who has taken at the teacher's College levrn course's in audio-visual education. I hope I shall always ap- plaud simple and natural writing. I shall always be pleased by attacks upon bigotry and Intolerance. But I am not sure that clear thinking and humane understanding can be learned, as the adver- tisements say Spanish can Ik , at a glance. There arc those who attribute the ills of American education to John Dewey. Just as a Harvard scholar a few years ago fathered ill the diseases of modem life upon Bacon and Rousseau. I am pleased to announce that I have discovered the true model upon which our university catalogs are based and the philosophy upon their Instruction Is founded: Astonish your fttends. I.earn the piano this easy way. No musi- cal knowledge necessary. No laborious practice. Yet in Just fifteen day», using our most advanced methods of Instruction, you will he able to play. Thousands of satisfied pupils have written: They laughed when I sat down to play . . I have called to your attention two mistaken notions of educa- tion. first, the assumption that upon the shoddy of an American high school malcducatlon It Is good to machine-stlteh the em- broidery of vocational training. Such a procedure. 1 have sug- gested. can for the most part produce only rote learners who are incompetent to the obvious need for profound and basic learning In all the arts and sciences. That furthermore, the national ad- miration of and concentration upon the production of such rote learners effectively forbids the education of nearly sufficient num- ber of truly learned persons. Secondly. I have called to your atten- tion the cosmetics that pass for culture—the hope that a sophomore aurvey In English can arrest the national and individual Illiteracy: that a speeding glance at world history or a eourse In conversation or in general science can arouse a respect for learning, produce germinal ideas, or do anything more than confirm the ignorant in the pride of knowledge. But there is. I remind myself, the still unfallen bastion of true learning, the college of liberal arts. Or. at any rate, one college of liberal arts. In that college, though It talks n lot. there is no course in conversation. There, if only for want of proper equipment, there Is no course in telephoning. Journalism, business administra- tion. and courses in recreation for librarians have made no inroads. 4!i .w 'vondcrer whether that college offers courses in the selection of the wardrobe need only look at the undergraduates. At such ma ' h°PP. a” true learning will flourish and abound. At this college of liberal arts of which 1 speak, the undergraduate » required to pass—to achieve, that U. the grade of D the second year of a foreign language. The world is thereby assured that he can read six out of ten words of a text that a French schoolboy r.« mattered at the age of eight. We are unfortunately not as «urco that he will Improve the shining hour by reading the litern- v. 1 J-’b uage. for the college has so many other things to ? ,hat ” cannot insist upon that particular Improvement igivora'nce ' con,cnt wl,h hav,nK rubbed off one small corner of his college. the undergraduate is initiated Into the mi?!! ? of thc tongue. His learned attention Is called to rf ? a d «Jangling participles, and he is drilled Into setting oown five hundred words, one after the other. Cynical or even fli«.oyal persons on the faculty almost daffy ask the teachers of fcngmn why the undergraduates do not Invariably acquire the r ?.d, -,,h «rdonlc triumph they exhibit the qunsi-llterate isi ud 4.nd fourth-year men. The undergraduate has In . 0 'cd to such recondite texts as Genesis, some short :n»Ml«rcpr n.,cd fom the magazines, and a popular novel or two. , n rc lu,rcs tha he pay further attention to his language and .kra.,u.!r bcf,,,w ,ht' college has so many other things to do to VX . cannot Insist upon that particular Improvement. ,h.4' undergraduate is required to study two of the . du,I requirement prevents his falling into the rut l.„yiUh7alton ,nd • a dir end of those courses, he has acquired ,r.n.V uC an ,helr grammar , the college must be content, be- H, !,,.. i10 rna«y more things to do to him. . Instance, enroll in philosophy «elementary) or his- m ii!!!C,,1Ciel ry, .or rclWon «elementary) or something else (clc- to hc has assembled a number of these introductions no in!!!1 ' hc not cultivate their acquaintance. lie may , marc freely what shall be studied for him by the pro- rnrfii-.., i psychology «elementary), economics (ele- ..... ,y-ri. ft“''anccd writing (elementary), or music (very elemen- L - hypothetical candidate for a learned degree must, to orr Ji!P'.oinro ,n ,e|Kht or nine semester courses whose relation to fUmi?1 V r. 15 bM ,norc obvious than that of those I have just in tt i.p ”... a fiance ; t the records of a few seniors indicates that Wun,;„ 5ar ?r residence the undergraduate customarily en- «II .i!! ™ eleven to fifteen separate subjects. This fact caffs awav ,n crsl.c, image of one who mounted his horse and sped h,. vyj. aJl directions. The supreme test whether our candidate ffonr r-Tn t!1Vcatcd.i!s administered by the adding machines, which ,.n hi.!he crucial question how many hours he has sat hon let f stud y , 0',om 'hile somebody talked around the ques- ° Ich I speak, few concessions have been made od ... w ocationaliwn and few to the more superficial notions of sell ...i J, '.Par,icular bugaboo of this college lx the notion of the Rensu .! ,n.an which is. I dare say. a hangover from the reniurv oi! i ? hc universal man or even of the eighteenth from »► of pcntleman. Much of what those men learned . nR ' hls college tries to teach In brief and •y superficial courses. In its terror lest the undergraduate ?°.r£.? n 2 h!lg■ lrlc l ? acquaint them with everything iiT Y? .V» » cl’ d.' .s;,ld Oliver Goldsmith, soon becomes a talker ‘n a ubjects. but master in none. He thus acquire» a superficial ,for nR ,.°.Md.. onl shows his Ignorance when he attempts to exhibit his skill. And where did these candidates for well-rounding prepare them selves? For the most part, in llie high schools I have described It is rumored that not all of them, even there, attained to the ton three quarters of their classes. With a curriculum so crowded, with energies so dispersed, with so much text-book learning of rudiments, how can the college of liberal arts make a sufficient contribution to the national need for learned men?'» At the college of which I speak, scarcely four out oi ten freshmen remain to take a degree, some withdraw to take degrees elsewhere, but they hardly push the average beyond fifty percent. Yet upon the first two classes in the college over half the resources of the college- -money, time, space, energy--are cx- pended. Instructors are chosen for evidence of learning They are honored in the profession according as they increase that learn- mg. et it would he hard, 1 think, to find in that college an in- structor who does not give the lion's share of Ills attention to Instruction in the rudiments of his subject, to men of whom the greater number will never take the degree He has little or no time for his own studies, and he fight a not always winning battle against stalencss. boredom, or cynicism It is the custom, I know, and an honorable one. to proclaim the virtues of the liberal college. The college of which I speak I Justly proud of the number of Its giaduates who enter upon learned studies: who arc honored by fellowships of all sorts That college has been cited, by disinterested observers, for Its disproportion.iir contribution of young scholars I share that college's pride In those distinctions and declare, not for the first time, by conviction that liberal education Is the only true education. But, as a better mnn said on a better occasion, I have set my heart on honesty in this chapter I want to remember not onfy those who faffed to complete the course, or those who completed the course with distinction, but those who did neither. Those. I mean, who com- pleted the course, took the degree, and who were «h Huh- inter- ested in learning when they left as when they came. 1 will not utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken (true learning), and have burned incense unto other gods . It Is sufficient to remark their continued hampering presence and the small honor they do us when thev depart It was not perhaps necessary for tne to quote Jeremiah, hut there was a certain appropriateness in it Having done so. I ought now to be, as they say. constructive. That men should dress tastefully is no bad Ihlng. To study radio announcing, camping In education, and the teaching of moral and spiritual values In the public schools Is belter, perhaps, than to study nothing. We need hairdressers and pharmacist and hotel managers. Bui I am sorry that Institutions of higher learning should have supposed it their duly to provide such persons I am sorry that it should have been necessary to confound such training with education an«l so to obliterate the real, the vast difference between them. I am sorry that the mediocrity which has no long marked our public schools should so ominously threaten to domi- nate the higher institutions I am sorry to use a cliche. hut I can't help saying that Gresham's law Is apparently working all too well. To say of a man nowadays that he is a college graduate Is to communicate nothing more precise than to say of the object to he guessed that It Is animal, vegetable or mineral It can mean voca- tlonnlist. trivlnlist. or no-Ionger-Jagged individualist. I should like to he able, a few years from now. to use ■ very precise term. I should like to say of many well-educated men that they were Kenyon graduates. College enrollments will double in a few years; Kenyon will attract a small share of the increase. I hope Kenyon will use the opportunity not chiefly to increase its numbers but Its quality: to say What constitutes preparation for college work. Colleges have been notoriously vague about that for some time. We can't get better students than the secondary schools will supply, but I hope we will Insist on getting their best. Once the young man Is here. Kenyon ought to he able to Insist, ns now it cannot always Insist, on the minimum performance which entitles him to continued membership In the college Kenyon will cease. I hope, to require or even to allow him to dissipate his energies over half a score of subjects at the secondary level. I quoted Jeremiah; 1 will even the score by quoting Gordon Chalmers: Straight Is the gate and narrow Is the way that leads to breadth . Or as he might have said, depth. Let us try to create not well-rounded but well-cultivated, well-matured men. Let's do it by aiming not for diversity but for unity Let's do it bv reducing the amount of time we spend on secondary subjects and by practically eliminating time spent on persons who are unlikely ever to take a degree. There is not time, even If this were the occasion, for ine to an- nounce the perfect curriculum. But I do envisage a course m study that would as soon as possible project the undergraduate into the Intensive and liberal study of at most a couple of allied subjects—science and philosophy; literature and history; mathematics and economics. A lot would be left out. you vny We should be mov- ing in the direction of the very specialization I have decried. The leaving out might be beneficial and might in any event be only formal With time for study, with a center to work from, and in the company of undergraduates who want to learn, a man might do bet- ter this way than in the present. As for the specialization. I would distinguish between the merely mechanical and technological on the one hand, and the theoretic or liberal on the other. The Journalist is mechanically trained who on poor secondary study ha imposed some courses In layout, the recruitment of advertising, and the writing of headlines. A man Is liberally trained who. having given ycant of close study to history and literature, turn» to Journalism A move in the direction of that kind of specialization would. I think, he a move not from but toward truly llbernl education Having selected the best available men. having more directed than dissipated their energies, the college would then insist on their revealing by genuinely comprehensive examinations their fitness to enter the company of learned men These graduate . a very high proportion of the entering class, would not be Pasteurs. B rhaps. or Einsteins. They might not be Milton or Jefferson . ut neither would they be talkers of all subjects and masters of none. Thev would not Join those who travesty or despise learning out of ignorance of what it Is. Instead of riding In all directions at once thev would constantly be making for ray upon all the disciplines for the Insights that would strengthen them in their own centers of knowledge. Produce ten classes of such men. say 1250 of them. Send them to the schools of medicine, law. or theology: send them to graduate schools or Into business or into the service of the government It would soon he said of them not they are college graduates hut they .re Kenyon men . -Denham Sutcliffe. Thirty-one