United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Page 8 text:

The Dismal Case of Prince Dr. Millar MacLure ' 7 ' 0UNG Prince Blog had been very carefully brought up. His parents had sheltered him from all evil influences, especially from women and machinery. When he was eighteen he had never seen a pin-up girl or heard the insistent music of an internal combustion engine. He was in consequence quite unfitted for his abrupt entrance into our culture. He had been very thoroughly schooled by an old tutor imbued with old-fashioned ideas of education. The good old fuddy-duddy had given the Prince a solid grounding in humane letters, including ancient and modern litera¬ ture, history and philosophy. He had the ab¬ surd notion that boys can be taught a great deal, and that they are the b etter for a rigid academic discipline. He also believed that the earlier one acquires some knowledge of the past the earlier one is equipped to deal with the present. He had some other strange ideas too, but these I omit, for I would not have you think too hardly of him. There was a counsellor in the entourage of the King, Blog’s father, a shrewd and ruthless but plausible fellow, who had his eye upon the crown. He reasoned that if Blog could be de¬ moralized (in a quiet way, of course) he might not be fit to succeed to the throne, and the way would be open for someone with modern ideas. Accordingly he suggested to the King that Blog should be sent to university, like other young men of his age. An excellent training for His Royal High¬ ness, he observed genially. See how the world wags, you know. Meet others of his own age. Democratic too, in a nice way. He will make the better ruler for having mixed with the cream of the masses—and that’s what you see at college these days, the cream of the masses. But surely, said the King nervously, from the things one hears about the universities . . . Surely the environment . . . Blog, now ... a sweet boy, we think, but tender. Yes, tender is the word I would use. I was just saying to the Queen this morning . . . Your Majesty, interrupted the counsellor, that is just it. What, after all, is the essence of government? Compromise. Compromise. Shaking hands with reality, I would call it. So if there is any little discrepancy between the Prince’s early training and what he experiences at college, it will teach him to compromise, to strike a balance. He will learn to hide the iron hand in the velvet glove, to season wisdom with temperance, and fortitude with discretion. In short, he will come to terms with the world. The King gave in, of course, and Blog was duly enrolled in a famous old college, in the Faculty of Arts, in the Freshman year, under the incognito of Smith, J. B. The process of de¬ moralization began. To begin with, he had nothing to do. He had done the whole four years’ work with his tutor before he registered. The tutor (who had been very worried about the whole business) had suggested that he should take courses in mathe¬ matics and biology. But the evil counsellor had him registered in Arts, majoring in English and Psychology, and Blog found he couldn’t take maths., because of some regulation, or the time¬ table—he never knew exactly. At first, it is true, he thought he would have his work cut out for him in the psychology courses. Both subject matter and terminology were strange and even fascinating. Then it came to him that the terms were made up of Latin and Greek roots, and those he understood. Unlike his classmates, he did not have to memorize them, for he knew what they meant. The subject-matter too, he perceived, was the human psyche. They were investigating it in an abstract and roundabout way (scientific, they called it); he was accustomed to understand it by its first direct expression in myth. I fear he began to subside into idle reverie, while his instructors plotted graphs of “attitudes” and “skills.” As for the courses in literature, they were ’useless altogether. The instructors laboured painfully to expound what to Blog were com¬ monplace. One of them, a very earnest person, spent a whole hour explaining the classical allusions in a poem by Milton, line by line. Blog slept. Most of the time, he noticed, these teach- Page Six

Page 7 text:

I BELIEVE that I can make no better use of the courtesy here extended to me by the editor of Vox than to set down briefly my views about the function ' this publication should serve in the life of the College. We should be able, through the contents of Vox, to measure the extent to which the way of life we follow here has released creative literary capacity in the student members of our college community. Liberal edu¬ cation should not only mature the mind but should also impart an inward urge to use the critical powers creatively in the delineation and inter¬ pretation of individual and community experience. A mind that is truly awakened not only has something to say but is under an inner compulsion to try, at least, to say it. Vox exists to afford to the student a medium for creative, literary self-expression. This is its most important function. I sometimes fear that there is not as much of this urge to creative impression among us today as there was a few years ago 1 . The task of literary editors of College and University publications now seems to be that of urging their fellows to produce rather than that of discriminating judgment of what they have produced. I hope that this does not mean that there is falling upon us the malaise of intellectual complacency and irresponsibility. What we receive from others comes alive for us only by virtue of what creative effort we make to pass it on to others, whether in literary form or otherwise. It is in seeking to give, not merely to receive, that we add to the riches of our own mind and being. I, for one, shall feel happier when I hear once more that the editor of Vox is deluged with manuscripts and hard beset to choose the best among them for publication. W. C. Graham, Principal. Page Five

Page 9 text:

ers were not doing anything so advanced as that. They were busy teaching the students what writers in their own tongue actually were saying at any given point. This was for Blog a strange and depressing procedure. The instructors seemed depressed too. One of the younger ones was concerned to develop “skills” (that was his word) for the apprehension of poetry, but he was a guest lecturer from the big Educational Psychology building. He had quite a following, but it did not include Blog. While the Prince was noticing these disturb¬ ing facts, the faculty never noticed him. He was a name on their lists, Smith, J. B. But just be¬ fore mid-term all Freshmen took an Intelligence Test of the species named by its American Middle West manufacturer “Type MC-4-0.” Most of Blog’s fellow students made between 160 and 230 out of a possible 300. Blog made 68. The Faculty of Arts and Science, in solemn conclave assembled, decided that (in their words) “since Smith, J. B., is not adapted to the requirements of the Arts Course, we suggest that he seek admission to the School of Engin¬ eering.” Blog was out. Meanwhile the delicate and tender Prince had been introduced to what the President, in his welcoming address, had called “the ameni¬ ties of college life.” He had indeed shaken hands with reality. Reality had a warm and nervous paw. Reality’s name was Marylouann Muggridge. She was also in Freshman year, but, unlike Blog, she was happy there. She ex¬ pressed her sentiments pretty freely on their first date. I rather liked that show, didn’t you? O, I forgot, you haven’t been to shows much. Well, I suppose most of them aren’t much, same old formula, but—Professor Suggs is always critic¬ izing Hollywood in English class but did you see him there tonight? I suppose that was his wife with him, pathetically dowdy I thought. But then how could you dress decently on a teach¬ er’s salary that’s one thing I’ll never be I’m telling you is a teacher’s wife. Imagine you not having been in a car either unusual family yours must be (I don’t mean it from nasty at all so don’t get that look on your face but really). Dad’s getting me an Austin for Christ¬ mas I think and I’ll show you how to drive I’ll have to learn myself too I guess the Austin’s got a different shift but it’ll be awfully handy. Marj—you remember Marj she’s the one with the hair—was in tonight she’s got a frightful complex about the athletic director wept salt tears you’d hardly believe she’s had wonderful grades up to now I told her to snap out of it if I had her brains I wouldn’t mess up my life for anybody. That reminds me I’ve got to sell tickets for the Hop tomorrow awful bore but I suppose it’ll get me out of French class all those verbs I mean I’m just not getting anything done at all I’ll have to get cracking on the books soon . . . Isn’t that sweet, that one on the left I mean, such a lovely shade. . . . Who could resist this girlish naivete, this abundant charm? Not Blog. In Marylouann’s presence, moving ecstatically in the aura of “Tempt Me,” he found refuge from the barren¬ ness of his formal studies, and consolation for his failure therein. Here was one so beauti¬ fully untouched by the contaminations of the intellect, a child of nature. Blog failed to per¬ ceive that Marylouann was not unusual, that she indeed was an almost ideal representative of her kind. To him she was she. He determined to marry her. He did marry her, was disinherited for dis¬ obeying the provisions of the Royal Marriage Act, 39 Blog XIV, c. 4, and the good King his father passed into the power of the palace cabal headed by that evil counsellor. Blog went into the insurance business in order to support Marylouann in the style to which she was accustomed. A psychiatrist friend of mine, in a moment of indiscretion, told me the other night that Marylouann was his patient. Are there already some little tensions in that love- nest? Poor Blog. Page Seven