University of Oregon - Oregana Yearbook (Eugene, OR)

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MESH Where the Mill Race Begins

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TO ,MRS. IRENE I-I. GERLINGER WHOSE INSPIRING PERSONALITY HAS BEEN A LEADING FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A GREATER OREGON, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

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EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP NE of the most important of all the aims of education today. is 0 training for citizenship. There are but few now to question the value of a college education. If there were needed any final ar- gument, the recent great war provided that argument. In that war the man With University training proved his worth and proved the worth of the training he had receivedeproved it in that great supreme test of all the qualities that make for manhood. Does it not follow, then, that one of the chief concerns of a demo- cracy is the education of its citizens-espec'ially While they are young and receptive and impressionable? Indeed, a very great man has said re- cently that the one great business of a democracy is education: the con- stant improvement of the people themselves through education, genera- tion after generation. ' Can the state do better than to educate its young men and women for citizenship? The means whereby society can best accomplish this purpose, how- ever, are not so easily found. The citizen casts his vote according to his best judgment. His judgment is the result of his native intelligence plus his education and experience. The state must work With Whatever brains and character it has at its disposal. , But it can affect that raw material, its untrained youth, by providing for them facilities for education. A manis judgment, in so far as his own affairs are concerned, is developed by experience, his own, and that of others With Whom he comes in contact. Education places before the young citizen all the consummated experience of mankind; and'this body of experience constitutes the truth, in so far as men have learned the truth and recorded it in books for the guidance of other men. . Knowledge, then, is necessary for good citizenship. The student learns the truth about men; his horizon becomes broadened, and because he has learned so much of the experiences of mankind-their struggles, their sorrows, their agonies, their achievements, their high aspirations, he becomes tolerant, liberal, open-minded, open-hearted. Is not that, after all, educatiOn for citizenship?