United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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a purpose, and those whose only purpose seems to be to have no purpose; here, young idealists eager to go crusading, and young adventurers who must have demanded “their share of the family portion which falleth to them” to spend, if not in riotous living in this far country, at least in aimless living. Truly, university and college halls can be called the “melting pot” of nations and of social classes. According to one writer, who made an extensive survey of fourteen of the higher institutions, the most vulnerable point of this higher education is the diversion of interests of the students from the true aims of the college. Athletics, dramatics, social activi¬ ties, and a multitude of extra (really intra) curricular activities have cut down to the minimum the attention given to studies. As President Wilson used to say, “The side-shows are so numerous that they have swallowed the circus, and we in the main tent do not know what is going on.” Those who have been the smartest of the student body and have not needed to work to lead the pack have often been the guiltiest in the side-showing. They have always been able to find enough patrons to give the side-shows the appearance of a real circus, without the need of a main tent. The performance is, as a rule, excellent. No generation has ever had such clever children, athletically, dramatic¬ ally, socially. Therein lies the tragedy. For no generation ever has had so many problems crying out for capable leaders to solve them. All the tight-rope walking and loop-the-looping will not hint at even a makeshift solution. At its best, the college is the birthplace of noble ideals, endur¬ ing friendships and deep, broad understandings. At its worst, it is a winter resort where young men and women may gather for the purpose of “rubbing off the rough comers, of knowing how to meet people, and of getting in the swim of things, as if there were some magic elixir in academic atmosphere which should transform bust¬ ling and purposeless undergraduates into gentlemen and ladies of culture.” Parents have not been blameless in the matter. Those with money gave it lavishly to their young-bloods; and those who hadn’t pinched in their own expenditures in order to keep up appearances, “all in the hope of providing their children with everything but energy of mind and decision of character necessary to accomplish anything worth while.” Parents have known all along that hard work and high-mindedness develop personality and leadership, and yet they expect almost a miracle from snap exposures to either one Quotations from this survey. [ 6 ]

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THE COLLEGE OF TODAY IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW A. R. CRAGG T HE British Broadcasting Corporation started a series of talks last summer called, “I Protest,” in which speakers were allowed to protest against anything that would seem worth while protesting. We can be very certain there was no shortage of topics, and no lack of zeal and enthusiasm in exercising the freshly granted privilege. If there is one thing that mankind in general is inclined to do with some readiness, it is to protest. And for not a few, the last twenty years or even more have been a period in which presidents and deans, professors and lecturers, alumni and not wholly disinterested laymen have joined in a chorus of protest against education, until the reports and addresses and articles have made a library of lamenta¬ tion. When Woodrow Wilson was still President of Princeton, he spoke of the note of apology everywhere for education, of the lack of definiteness of aim in teaching, and the hopeless confusion and utter dispersion of energy among students. Nicholas Murray Butler, then President of Columbia, lamented the tendency of academic institutions to drift with the tide rather than to formulate definite policies and to labor for their execution; and the tendency to be made the prey of every passing whim rather than to pick up the slack in discipline, to accept the responsibility for passing upon relative values, and to dispel the confusion between general train¬ ing and vocational preparation; the choice of which, he claimed, would be a choice between suicide and salvation. Less dignified protesters have condemned our “curriculum as chaotic, our college professor as a cloistered recluse out of touch with the broad human currents of contemporary life, and our stu¬ dents as vagrants of the higher life, and college days themselves, as at best, a pleasing interlude after strenuous high school days and before the more serious activities of life.” It is a sign of hope that the protesters, whether dignified or undignified, were often those who knew the college best. Higher Education has actually become popular, attracting thousands of young people from every walk of life. Here we find students whose parents belong to the oldest traditions and others whose parents are New Canadians; here, those who come to spend four years of leisurely loafing, and many more who have to prac¬ tise rigidly planned economy; here, those who have some notion of 15 ]

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of these. Two such exposures occur twice yearly, and the side-show¬ ers make their diurnal migrations from executive offices, common room and playing field to the dull routine of belated assignments and to the rapid osmosis of notes. Some college presidents have been brave enough to tell us that the curriculum-makers are the the guilty parties without clearcut notions of “what a liberal education is and how it is to be secured; and that there is little wonder at the confusion of values and the inevitable springing up of the heresy of equivalence of studies; viz., that one study is as good as another for liberal education, provided it is well taught; that professionalism has all but upset our equilib¬ rium from above, and the secondary schools from below in their in¬ sistent clamor for more and more practical subjects for entrance admission into Higher Education.” “Further, while this process has been gaining, there has not been any steady front presented from within; within academic circles, the battle rages between the philol¬ ogist and the dilettante, between the cult of discipline and the cult of interest, between the upholders of teaching and the upholders of research, between the champions of ancient languages and the cham¬ pions of modern languages, between the advocates of cultural and vocational pursuits.” Evidently if young people are waiting for a rallying cry, they will wait. They should not have to wait. Who has ever claimed that Jack was as good as his master in the educa¬ tional arena? “The democracy for which we ought to be fighting today is more than a program of equal rights for all in human living; it will not rest less on equal rights, but it will rest more on the ideals of brotherhood and service; it will not be less political and legal, per¬ haps, but it will be infinitely more social and spiritual.” The prob¬ lems of this new democracy for the world of tomorrow are the op¬ portunities of the college education of today, based upon the philos¬ ophy of education as an instrument for human living. Will there be unprecedented demands in the colossal work of reconstruction for trained men and women? The British Labor Party, the sound British type, has already placed broad responsibili¬ ties upon education. Every citizen in tomorrow’s world must have a voice in his own welfare and he cannot know his own welfare without a “thorough education in human living” in the college of today. Arthur Henderson has prophesied that the coming period of reconstruction will impose upon educated leaders of all civilized states new and searching tests of character and intellect. “We must create a race of men and women within our college halls, who shall [V]