United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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The Luxury Tux J. H. Dow PPHE Canadian government has seen fit to impose upon its miserable subjects a tax which we feel has not been duly appreciated, nor duly extended. Among those items not specifically mentioned in the brief before the House of Commons has been the upper levels of education. To prevent any misunderstanding, let the generic term “liberal education” extend to all upper branches of the educational tree as we now vision it, with the possible exception of those military and business training machines which have such small pretensions that they are willing to train a man to do a job. The apparent aim of all higher education is to ren¬ der a man unfit for menial service and in¬ capable of better, and all women unsuited for any but the most subliminal tasks. This is a byproduct of culture and there has been devised no ready market for its absorption. The college transmission of “the cultural herit¬ age” has been worshipped by John Dewey as a “wonderful mouthfilling phrase.” The twenty- five percent luxury tax has been on education for a long time. Businessmen have indulged in the luxury of philosophy for some time, called it pragmatism, and offered common stock at par value to hun¬ gry summum bonurn seekers. In education pragmatism becomes progressivism, and had been progressive so long as the new methods were applied on apparently necrotic skulls steeped in the preservative indoctrinations of reading, writing, and arithmetic. A recession is due. Progress is possible from a point, but the idea of progress from nature seems to indicate more nature. While Wordsworth and Rousseau cartwheel, we will quote R. M. Hutch¬ ins, a voice in the wilderness of weedy reform. The liberal arts college degree “Seems to certify that the student has passed an uneventful period without violating any local, state, or federal laws, and 1 ' that he has a fair, if temporary, recol¬ lection of what his teachers have said to him. - . . Little pretense is made that many of the things said to him are of much importance.” A luxury indeed, although this was not said of Manitoba universities. We are unfortunately the perpetuators of a necessary society; there is little proper luxury bequeathed to us. We eat common food, drink common drink, speak common speech; we spawn few gourmands, few gourmets, and no orators. We have a lot of college graduates. One of the supposed purposes of the college existence is to preserve culture, especially that of the past. When the monks hid out in the cloistered ruins and illuminated manuscripts, this was a very sound idea. There is no present purge on culture, its only danger is internal decay. When Plato finally becomes untrans¬ latable, let him die in peace. When Jesus seems to teach death as a way of life, he had better be relegated to the land of myth. Until then, the colleges will do little to preserve cul¬ ture, and they would do better to spread it. We are living in a democracy which is ably marked by the freedom to live; we should be living with colleges which mark the way to live well. The college should be a proving ground for life, not an escape or at best a con¬ flict with life. The student parades his dicho¬ tomy of living before an amazed public which tries to sympathize and manages to tolerate. The graduate student is a novice in the world, and generally shirks his responsibilities for leadership, until he feels sure of himself, and then he dies. There is one field in which the college life excels. It is an apparently appreciated one, for the one certain test that intellects will acknowl¬ edge is the test of time. Every college graduate is the most immune to insult of any class of the human races. Small men with small minds read a book and then write another one abbut that book. This is called a textbook and thou¬ sands of immune-from-insult students read, paraphrase and write examinations on that book. Thousands of lectures are oral presenta¬ tions of these hallowed shrines, while the more decent if more outmoded Christian shrines are spurned. Every college text has the suggestive title “Introductory,” and the student wades through more introductions and remembers less of the things he meets than any scorned social climber on his way to the dizzy heights Page Fifteen

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WINDATT COAL CO. LTD. • COAL • COKE • WOOD 506 PARIS BUILDING Phone 927 404 AQUA-TERRE Sporting Qoods U. C. Cardigans with Crest, $8.95 U.C. Crest, $1.95 Crested Sweat Shirts, $2.75 Sports equipment for Badminton, Skating, Skiing, Hockey, etc. 510 PORTAGE AVE. WINNIPEG Phone 33 306 (Opp. United College) SONG OF A MODERN (AND SLIGHTLY REBELLIOUS) HAREM GIRL Master, what is thy desire? Ask whate’er thou would of me. Jewels, roses, altar, fire; Heavy incense drifting higher. Sweet words — (know me for a liar ), I shall give it thee. Master, I await thy pleasure, Speak what thou would have me do. Gold is but a tiring treasure — Plumes and cushions for your leisure. I shall bring; and white wines measure. (Beware a poison brew). Master, dances old I know, Wish you that of me? Eyes cast down (lest boredom show) Through the ancient steps I go. The eyes of other dancers glow But what is that to me? Master, did I hear thee call? See, still I answer thee. But the gifts of love were ever small And oh! its bars weave on irksome wall. Beware, my Lord, lest you summon all And I am free. Donna Munroe SONNET When I describe upon this lasting page, The love I feel for you within my heart, I realize, ’though we give way to age; ’Though time’s grim stroke will move us far apart; Some lover long ahead in untold book — In chapter yet unread by Time’s keen eye — Will love and on my humble words will look, Will think and say the same as here did I. Oh! love dies not as mortal lovers do, But lights it’s vibrant flame in young loves’ minds, And thrives, and brightly burns unending through The ages; to complete its true design. Though thrones may fall — be moulds to dust decaying — Words live in lovers’ hearts for future saying. Paul A. Sigurdson. Page Fourteen

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of indecency. The present theory of education holds that students should be introduced to every conceivable course in the first two years, then they may choose those they feel promise pleasure through another introduction. If they lack the minds to be insulted, perhaps they have the necessary sensitivity in their pocket books. Some appear bored stiff, others are limply per¬ plexed, but none will admit the much finer emotions aroused by insult. It is a luxury to be able to withstand insult. It is only those people endowed with procrastination and su¬ perficiality who are the natural inheritors of this luxury. It is with reluctance that we would point out the basis for the law regarding luxury items and taxes. We are the holders of a democracy, the retainers of beautiful myths. That educa¬ tion may be a necessity for democracy while becoming a luxury, is a paradox we would en¬ deavor to resolve. It is of paramount import¬ ance that everyone in a democracy assume the easier means of communication, in our partic¬ ular outmoded culture this means learning to speak, and sometimes read and write. Think¬ ing is not a form of communication, and has rightly been relegated to the few people who seem to enjoy it, in much the same way that only a few people box and wrestle. In both cases most are content to enjoy the sports as spectators. Few people want to hurt them¬ selves; besides it takes so much practice. Now, it is easy to understand that training in communication is necessary for the functioning of a democracy, and that this prime need has given rise to much of the jingoism that insists on freedom as a cornerstone of our way of life. It shouldn’t involve too great a demand on the same understanding to realize that while this may be a necessity in a certain broad sense, it amounts to a luxury for the individual. It is an unnecessary luxury that each individual should be capable of succinct writing, proper pronunciation and polite conversation. These are reflections of culture and a supposed pro¬ duction of college training. We could do with a great deal less of these undoubtedly admir¬ able virtues and expressions of good taste if we were assured that the colleges would pro¬ duce a satisfactory number of leaders in thought, government, and the relief of man’s estate. Those graduates who do assume a place of leadership in their community, coun¬ try, and field, do so more often despite their college training than due it. If there is one distinguishing characteristic of leadership, it is the feeling of responsibility toward the followers. Somehow the public at large has not given up its trust in college men, it still seeks the answer to many baffling ques¬ tions from the mouths of college graduates. It is not long before the individual men in this vaster public despair of finding pertinent answers to their questions from the evasive tongues of the superficial dilettantes of the arts and sciences. Even those pillars of society in our yesteryears, the doctors, ministers, and druggists, have built walls around themselves to shield them from the demanding questions of their friends. The luxury of education is its escape from the demands of living, and the challenge to education is to build in its own environment a stimulating, instructive, and forceful atmosphere that breeds men and lead¬ ers rather than cynics and misleaders. A col¬ lege should be ready to assume the complete education of any man with the necessary in¬ telligence and maturity, regardless of his past training and his present incentive. If the col¬ lege does not provide an inspiration for the necessary work entailed in study, if it does not reproduce the live vitality of the extra¬ mural environment, if it does not accept ignor¬ ance into its walls, then it had better amalga¬ mate with other lending libraries where the least virtue is sensible classification of subject matter. College faculties are splitting up at an alarming rate. English is divided into studies of other writings and practises of one’s own; languages are taught as though they were a strange mixture of dream symbolism and hier¬ oglyphic manipulation rather than means of communication; mathematics are made to con¬ form to such a pattern of conditioned reflexes that a special department must be set aside to teach their application; social studies lead one to separate doors to find out how a man acts or how that mysterious conglomeration known as society might function if it were ever adequately described. The student must enlist in some number of these classified abstracts and later attempt to reconcile the force of the phys¬ ics lab with the libido of the psychologists and the murderer of Shakespeare. He must over¬ look the personal lives of people while he delves Page Sixteen