Keuka College - Kiondaga Yearbook (Keuka Park, NY)

Page 24 text:

THE MODERN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE CONVOCATION EXERCISES, SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH, BY DR. WENDELL T. BUSH. T YERYBODY knows that there is in the air a disposition J — ' to be radical. To be radical is to be discontented with something and to try to get rid of it. It is a negative attitude. We are all, I suppose, more or less radical, at least about the high cost of living and the low price of grapes. This new spirit or the spirit of seeking what is new and dif- ferent is to be found everywhere. Not everybody likes it. Some people call it the the spirit of progress, others call it anarchy and scepticism. I happen to like it, and I am going to speak up for it. It is called by different names in different places. In American politics we call it insurgent or Progressive; art, the field where new ideas are apt to get expressed first, has known this spirit for 100 years under the label of Roman- ticism. But call it what you like, the old sense of security in eternal verities, the habit of standing pat in a standpat universe has given way to a sense of movement of experi- ment and adventure. This interest in the new and the different appears also in theories and methods of education; and because education is a thing of such immense consequence, radicalism here ought not to be the merely negative attitude that it frequent- ly is. If the new spirit is really to spell progress in the field of education, we must know what we want and why we want it. Tben, if wTe are reasonable and fortunate, we may in some measure, be able to get it. I wish I might be able to say something worth while on this point. It would not be worth while to try to define ed- ucation, or progress, or the radical spirit. We all know what those things are. We live in the same part of the world, and feel the same great currents of public interest. So I will not try to be complete or orderly, or systematic. We are more likely to hit upon something if we just dump on the table whatever ideas we have, and then see what there is. The spirit is new because conditions are new; something

Page 23 text:

0 KEUKA COLLEGE FACULTY, 1912-1913. JOSEPH ARCHIBALD SERENA, A. B., Prksid Professor of Sacred Literature. MARY ETHEL SHIPMAN, A. M., I'rofessor of KnylUih literature. ROWLEY MONROE BARRUS, A. M., Professor of Science and Mathematics. ROLLA JAMES BENNETT, A. M., B. D., Professor of Philosophy and History : PHILETUS COOLEY BANKSON, A. B., Professor of Ancient Lanyuayes. PAUL RUSSELL BAIRD, A. B., Professor of Modern Lanyuayes. CHARLES D. BEAN, L. L. D., Professor of Law. ABELS. WOOD., A. M., Professor of Oratory. HENRY EDMUND MOZEALOUS, Professor of Music. KEUKA INSTITUTE FACULTY. 1912-1913. JOSEPH ARCHIBALD SERENA, A. B., President. DUDLEY CHAPIN BARRUS, B. S., Principal. Professor of Science and History. FRANCES SARAH ROSE, Ph. B., German and Latin. ANN ROBERTSON MELDRUM, Commercial Subjects. ROY BLAKE GRAVES, Mathematics. FLORENCE HANNA EVANS, Enylish. GRACE H. YOUNGS, Preliminary Subjects. EVA BELLE TAYLOR, Librarian.

Page 25 text:

THI COLLEGE RECORD. has happened. It has oot happened all at once, bnt its effects upon the imagination have come rather suddenly. A big part of it goes by the name of the industrial revolution, tin ohange from hand Labor to power driven machinery. And that is bringing a social revolution. We may like it or uot, we may apprehend the violence of anarchy, we may forsee the peaci i'ul evolution of new social arrangements, but we have got to make the best of it, and it will be well for us to make the best of it and not the worst. I think we are goiug to make the best of it. What is at the bottom of the industrial revolution? It is not poetry, or art, or religion. It is not anything that we owe in any great measure to the centuries before the nineteenth. It is a new thing ; it is science. To call this a scientific age is of course to commit an ob- vious platitude. Those who do not like science, and many that do like it, lament that the age has gone daft on science and cannot produce good art or good poetry. That is open to discussion, but it is true to a considerable extent, and it cannot be helped all at once. When the best ability of the day is attracted into industry and science other lines are bound to suffer. But all that belongs to another chapter. To say that science is a new thing, and that we have it in a stupendous measure is to say that our generation knows incomparably more facts than did the men who lived before 1850. I am not sure that we know any more about human values, about love, loyalty, courage and things like that. But we are getting a new point of view, and that is the great thing. It is the point of view of progress, not progress back to the civilization of Athens, but progress forward to, — well, nobody can tell quite what, but progress to something differ- ent and something better, because we are going to make things different and better, because we don't stand forever the stupidities that mutilate society. At least we talk that way very ardently and very nobly, and we think we are say- ing something. Yet if existing conditions are stupid, just what are the conditions that would be reasonable? No- body quite knows. That is however no reason why we