A Broader Mission for Liberal Education / Baccalaureate Address, Delivered in Agricultural College Chapel, Sunday June 9, 1901

Baccalaureate Address, Delivered in Agricultural College Chapel, Sunday, June 9, 1901.
By .... J. H. WORST, LL. D. President.
A Broader Mission for Liberal Education.
Baccalaureate Address, Delivered in Agricultural College Chapel, Sunday, June 9, 1901.
In America we recognize no aristocracy except that of genius or of character. Our countrymen are all citizens. Our government was founded upon the principle that all men are created free and equal and though intellectual endowments differ widely in individuals, yet special privileges are accorded to no one as a birthright. Therefore the college graduate, as well as any other aspirant, must carve his way to fame and fortune by energy and perseverance, or lose his opportunity in the tremendous activities going on about him. His only advantage is superior training which must nevertheless be pitted against practical minds in strenuous rivalry for every desirable thing he would accomplish. The mere fact of education is considered no badge of merit. Education represents power, but until it manifests itself in action, it is merely static, not dynamic, potential, not actual. It conveys to its recipient no self-acting machinery which, without lubricant or engineer will reel off success or impress mankind, as a matter of course.
The question is no longer asked by practical men what does a man know but what can he do? Knowing and doing have thus become so intimately associated by common consent as to be inseparable; for knowing without doing is indolence and doing without knowing is waste of energy. The former is sinful, the latter wasteful. For many years progressive educators have been striving against the culture-alone theory and advocating the education of the whole man—hand as well as head, body as well as mind. As a result the ancient educational structure is pretty well broken down, and the erstwhile curriculum has become a reminiscence. Many wealthy parents still educate their children for the larger pleasure which they believe education of the old type will afford them in life, but parents generally have come to look upon life as a period of intense activity rather than a brief round of pleasure, and hence provide an education for their children that will fit them for the every day demands that duty or necessity may make upon them. Since it is a matter of common observation that wealth is easily dissipated, especially when inherited, farseeing parents prefer an education for their children that is adapted to some useful end rather than the education that is largely ornamental or fashionable.