University of Wisconsin Oshkosh - Quiver Yearbook (Oshkosh, WI)

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THE SCHOOL

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1 BOOK ONE i

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r o the S tudents The program of an administrator ought to 1 c so clearly written in his own mind's Ixwk that it can he read by any interested observer of his work. But when the leaves of the lxx k are uncut, that is, when the work has just begun, a statement of philosophy is necessary. W ith this observation as a preface, we shall set forth for your inspection and examination some of those high objectives that appear worthy to us. In our state there are children to be taught and if jiossihle educated; the need for teacher-educating institutions is established by this fact alone. In addition. the purpose of our effort is inherent in it; our ideals must encompass scholarship, personality, ability to teach, and character as prerequisites for classroom work. The training institution owes a duty to the individual who seeks an education but it is under a greater obligation to those children and | arcnts whom he will teach. The college is a standardized test, an instrument of subjective judgment, and a sifter of wheat from chaff. Like every human institution it is fallible, but certain elemental facts we hold to Ik of universal truth and application; for example, the family is l»sic in our civilization; likewise schools and colleges have been found to promote learning, literature, philosophy, morality, invention, and in short education. The college is its teaching staff. The attitudes, the true scientific development, and that which comes as a bv-product of the right exercise of the mind, namely knowledge, are the elements of education. Scholarship comes to those who have or can acquire the will to work; scientific curiosity is its concomitant. Personality is a reflection of the inner spiritual being: it may Ik pleasing without being profound, but success does not long reside where a warped |x rsonality rules. The ability to teach rests fundamentally on a love for the process of improving one’s fellow-creatures: the skills can be acquired, just as any truly desired and realizable result can. by concentrated application. Character cannot be given one by any single agency. There are many cooj crating institutions and individuals whose attempts to instill this divine spark justifies their lieing. but there are many more organizations and personalities which lead the Pilgrims just as smoothly toward destruction. The universe is governed by the disciplined mind; our nation and its various subdivisions are crying out now for socialized culture and trained qualities of mind. The challenge is more defiant now than in any previous age because a great epoch of territorial expansion has reached its end, and the industrialized civilization has lost faith in its own works. Natural Science is now synthesizing all her former proud branches of investigation; man is inquiring and finding the answer to nature’s enigmas, but the challenge to all who yearn to be more than the skull of a Heidelberg man dug out of the million year old Pleistocene debris is to find quickly, a true social science. Forrest R. Poi.k. Page 16