United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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into forces of religion, economics, politics, wars, immigrations, and the comparatively new dis¬ covery, social disintegration. He must listen attentively while irrelevant details that appeal to the whims of lecturers are brought to his notice from textbooks that speak more and more in flimsy generalities; then step out into a world made up of carfare, passions, sickness, and college pep rallies. After four years of this schizoid living, he is deemed fitted to apply for a job as a salesman or routine tech¬ nician who pours little vials into large con¬ tainers or separates placentae from uteri. His period of unadulterated luxury over, he must reconcile his existence to society, whose chief demands are that he pay his bills promptly. The best students are naturally those who are indifferent or insensitive to this duality of ex¬ istence, or those blessed souls who mature so slowly that they never do discover the baseness that allows their idols of romantic art and over- worshipped science to stand unreachable above them. For many years the chief function of the pub¬ lic schools was to turn out perverted mimickers who could meet the standards of university entrance by liberal sprinklings of culture con¬ ned from history, literature, and languages; and for years the chief function of the univer¬ sity was to ridicule all that had been previously taught and set the student right with cynical remarks on patriotism, virtue, heroism, and religion; and suggest that his future acuteness would rest on his ability to understand the actions of men as evidences of their self-seeking baseness. Try as they may the college student finds it difficult to avoid the contagion of cynic¬ ism and despondency that breeds from such resentful appraisal of the leaders in society that colleges offer. The most sought explana¬ tion of action is selfishness, and all other pos¬ sible choices are eliminated as soon as a well phrased censure is written. It is small wonder that college men do not seek leadership, they are too self-critical to believe themselves cap¬ able of giving a loaf of bread without ulterior motives, let alone assuming the thankless and demanding task of leading public opinion and guiding public action. We have bred a luxury of hypercritical mumblers who condemn all actions without ever offering better ones. Despite the annual crop of scholastic suc¬ cesses and public failures that are “mess” pro¬ duced, there is a continual murmur going on about the best way to educate this strange ani¬ mal called a student. The murmurs assume a pat solution and seek it as though they had never heard of the Philosopher’s stone. The trouble with any such solution is the seeking of absolutes, and the glaring misconception of the purpose of education. Education only ex¬ ists to produce educated men and women, it is not to produce a mould or pattern, as modern conceptions of law seem to indicate. In some ways the rigidity of law leaves the individual freer than liberality of law, for he is then at least free to chose obedience or disobedience with the resulting prices of frustration or pun¬ ishment. Only at the elementary levels is this principle operative in intelligent education, yet the present awards of degrees, marks, scholar¬ ships and public licencing has all the artificial stimulation that the impatient mother’s piece of candy offers. At least a trained boxer does not need a diploma to show that he is capable of handling his fists, but apparently a college graduate cannot be identified any other way. As a mother spanks her child when she is in¬ competent to manage him, so the colleges expel unruly students, fail those who do not give the expected responses on examinations, and dis¬ own those who make statements embarrassing to the college’s public relations. The incentive to learning should spring from the student’s needs, not from the artificial impositions of college approval and familial hopes. The stu¬ dent should be graded according to his own progress, not by the present means of judging from a fluctuating norm of responses to set questions which can never be much more than a test of memory, and seldom more than an indication of interest. Some students are com¬ plete gluttons and their status depends so en¬ tirely on their achievements in scholastic fields that they eagerly soak up all the useless knowl- ege offered them in the firm belief that they will find satisfaction in drinking heavily from the sap of the tree of knowledge, and they are well on their way to a futile old age before they finally acknowledge that there is more offered than they can drink. These insatiable gluttons provide the pattern that is admired by professors, while the more normal humans Watch the process in disgusted amazement and fail the examinations. The gluttons exhibit their swelled heads to the public for approval Page Seventeen

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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

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and write knowing tomes on authors that na¬ ture had graced with virginal dust. It would be foolish to blame the colleges entirely for this production of ethereal intel¬ lectuality; some people will divorce life regard¬ less of law, customs, or religion. It is the waste mounting each year as the more normal and useful of college entrants are ignored in favor of these dust displacers of ancient libraries’ helpless tombs. Indeed much of the intoler¬ ant attitude of the faculty is based on what they would call the historic approach, digging up the past with its so-called glory and offer¬ ing it in all seriousness as a comment on mod¬ ern life. There is a justification for some stress on the historic approach, but there is no justi- faction for the half-hearted appendage of mod¬ ern literature, history, art, philosophy and so¬ cial study at the end of courses, books, and articles. Where contemporary study would be most rewarding, at the junior levels, it is en¬ tirely omitted in favor of poorly taught courses of classical learning. Apparently a young stu¬ dent is incapable of reading contemporary lit¬ erature, but is deemed much more competent to derive sense from classical writings where words have an entirely different connotation from those he is supposed to use in daily dis¬ course. We insist on producing incompetents for dull life and haven’t the guts to produce visionaries capable of a more inspired existence. The present defence of those responsible for education is a shrug, and the suggestion of a dilemma no matter what way they turn. Most students have a home life immeasurably emo¬ tional and insignificantly intellectual. They need some inspiration. Most faculty members are all too anxious to offer their personal ser¬ vices but are presently engaged in the never ending and fruitless task of preparing courses, delivering lectures, marking papers, and at¬ tempting mass disciplinary efforts as a substi¬ tute for interest provocation. When there is closer team work among the faculty members, and a subservience to the interests of the stu¬ dent, by close personal contact, advice, and a decent attempt to realize that the student is filled with a sense of his own importance and capacities, then amazing results will follow. So long as the present comb ination of im¬ potent temper tantrums and terrible attempts at humorous cojolery is employed, the student will labor under artificial stimulation, and the instructor under delusions of success. The most successful lecture is the least educative, and the pleasant manner of some instructors bears testimony to their unfounded conceit. The syco¬ phantic attitudes of the student stenographers who amass reams of notes, no method, little memory, and a marked titubation from left- handed weight lifting, should be enough justi¬ fication for the elimination of formal lectures. The present trend in education is a retrench¬ ment of all the old evils in new guises. A dy¬ namic is sought to replace the Christian ideals, a dynamic which assumes more and more the shape of a stillborn social consciousness. The time is not ripe for this bastard of idealism to appear as the motivating force behind educa¬ tion. If the Christian promise of rewards in the after life is now inadequate to drive men to educative self-discipline, then the driving force of man’s utility to society must be measured by more sensitive galvonometers than the twisted coils of liberal education. The only adequate motive for the present crops of stu¬ dents to grow is the training for leadership. Our need for leaders is apparent in every sphere of life, and those who are presently em¬ ploying themselves as leaders are the industri¬ alists who manage to maintain the only pure motivation in all our complex incaginations of society — selfish lust for power. The laborer is swayed between devotion to an intangible cause and the necessity to keep a constant dribble of pay cheques arriving home. The scientists are confounded by too many con¬ trary theories, and the fact that their training demands they be skeptical while their discov¬ eries demand that they be astounded. The politician has not yet acclimatized his ora¬ torical talents to the needs of a literate public who refuses to be surprised at the most vio¬ lent disclosures, and are more capable than himself of believing the opposition to be all wrong. There is an increasing demand that the graduates from liberal colleges spring to the breaches in leadership, and until society becomes a stagnant mass of equalities, the need for leadership will increase. Nor will this lead to any sort of class distinction, for the graduate will continue to be the son of the people he will be called upon to lead. Page Eighteen