The History of University Education in Maryland / The Johns Hopkins University (1876-1891). With supplementary notes on university extension and the university of the future

by Bernard C. Steiner

Of Cambridge University, England.

I am requested to furnish information with reference to the University Extension Movement in England. It will be desirable that side by side with the facts I should put the ideas of the movement, for, in matters like these, the ideas are the inspiration of the work; the ideas, moreover, are the same for all, whereas the detailed methods must vary with different localities. The idea of the movement is its soul; the practical working is no more than the body. But body and soul alike are subject to growth, and so it has been in the present case. The English University Extension Movement was in no sense a carefully planned scheme, put forward as a feat of institutional symmetry; it was the product of a simple purpose pursued through many years, amid varying external conditions, in which each modification was suggested by circumstances and tested by experience. And with the complexity of our operations our animating ideas have been striking deeper and growing bolder. Speaking then up to date, I would define the root idea of 'University Extension' in the following simple formula: University Education for the Whole Nation organized on a basis of Itinerant Teachers.

But every clause in this defining formula will need explanation and defence.

The term 'University' Extension has no doubt grown up from the circumstance that the movement in England was started and directed by the universities, which have controlled its operations by precisely the same machinery by which they manage every other department of university business. I do not know that this is an essential feature of the movement. The London branch presents an example of a flourishing organization directed by a committee formed for the purpose, though this committee at present acts in concert with three universities. I can conceive the new type of education managed apart from any university superintendence; only I should look upon such severance as a far more serious evil for the universities than for the popular movement.

But I use the term 'university education' for the further purpose of defining the type of instruction offered. It is thus distinguished from school education, being moulded to meet the wants of adults. It is distinguished from the technical training necessary for the higher handicrafts or for the learned professions. It is no doubt to the busy classes that the movement addresses itself, but we make no secret of the fact that our education will not help them in their business, except that, the mind not being built in water-tight compartments, it is impossible to stimulate one set of faculties without the stimulus reacting upon all the rest. The education that is properly associated with universities is not to be regarded as leading up to anything beyond, but is an end in itself, and applies to life as a whole. And the foundation for university extension is a change, subtle but clear, that may be seen to be coming over the attitude of the public mind to higher education, varying in intensity in different localities, but capable of being encouraged where it is least perceptible,—a change by which education is ceasing to be regarded as a thing proper to particular classes of society or particular periods of life, and is coming to be recognized as one of the permanent interests of life, side by side with such universal interests as religion and politics. For persons of leisure and means such growing demand can be met by increased activity of the universities. University Extension is to be the university of the busy.

My definition puts the hope of extending university education in this sense to the whole nation without exception. I am aware that to some minds such indiscriminate extension will seem like an educational communism, on a par with benevolent schemes for redistributing the wealth of society so as to give everybody a comfortable income all round. But it surely ought not to be necessary to explain that in proposing a universal system of education we are not meaning that what each individual draws from the system will be the same in all cases. In this as in every other public benefit that which each person draws from it must depend upon that which he brings to it. University Extension may be conceived as a stream flowing from the high ground of universities through the length and breadth of the country; from this stream each individual helps himself according to his means and his needs; one takes but a cupful, another uses a bucket, a third claims to have a cistern to himself: every one suits his own capacity, while our duty is to see that the stream is pure and that it is kept running.

The truth is that the wide-reaching purpose of University Extension will seem visionary or practicable according to the conception formed of education, as to what in education is essential and what accidental. If I am asked whether I think of shop-assistants, porters, factory-hands, miners, dock or agricultural laborers, women with families and constant home duties, as classes of people who can be turned into economists, physicists, literary critics, art connoisseurs,—I admit that I have no such idea. But I do believe, or rather, from my experience in England I know, that all such classes can be interested in economic, scientific, literary and artistic questions. And I say boldly that to interest in intellectual pursuits is the essential of education, in comparison with which all other educational purposes must be called secondary. I do not consider that a child has been taught to read unless he has been made to like reading; I find it difficult to think of a man as having received a classical education if the man, however scholarly, leaves college with no interest in classical literature such as will lead him to go on reading for himself. In education the interest is the life. If a system of instruction gives discipline, method, and even originating power, without rousing a lasting love for the subject studied, the whole process is but a mental galvanism, generating a delusive activity that ceases when the connection between instructor and pupil is broken off. But if a teacher makes it his first business to stir up an interest in the matter of study, the education becomes self-continuing when teacher and pupil have parted, and the subject becomes its own educator. If then it be conceded that the essence of education is to interest, does it not seem a soberly practical purpose that we should open up to the whole nation without exception an interest in intellectual pursuits?

I take my stand on the broad moral ground that every human being, from the highest to the lowest, has two sides to his life—his work and his leisure. To be without work in life is selfishness and sloth. But if a man or woman is so entangled in routine duties as never to command leisure, we have a right to say to such persons that they are leading an immoral life. Such an individual has no claim to the title of a working man, he is a slave. It may be cruel circumstances that have thus absorbed him in business, but that does not alter the fact: slavery was a misfortune rather than a fault to those who suffered it, but in any case to be content with slavery is a crime. Once get society to recognize the duty of leisure, and there is immediately a scope for such institutions as University Extension that exist for the purpose of giving intellectual interests for such leisure time. The movement is thus one of the greatest movements for the 'raising of the masses.' With a large section of the people there is, at the present moment, no conception of 'rising' in life, except that of rising out of one social rank into another. This last is of course a perfectly legitimate ambition, but it is outside the present discussion: University Extension knows nothing of social distinctions. It has to do with a far more important mode of 'rising' in life,—that of rising in the rank to which a man happens to belong at the moment, whether it be the rank in which he started or any other. There is a saying that all men are equal after dinner: and it is true that, while in the material wealth we seek in our working hours equality is a chimera, yet in the intellectual pursuits that belong to leisure there is no bar to the equality of all, except the difference of individual capacity and desire. Macaulay tells of the Dutch farmers who worked in the fields all day, and at night read the Georgics in the original. Scotch and American universities are largely attended by students who have had to engage in menial duties all the summer in order to gain funds for their high education during the winter. And every University Extension lecturer, highly trained specialist as he is, will testify how his work has continually brought him into contact with persons of the humblest social condition whom a moment's conversation has made him recognize as his intellectual equals. No one has any difficulty in understanding that in religious intercourse and experience all classes stand upon an equality; and I have spoken of the foundation for the University Extension movement as being the growing recognition of education as a permanent human interest akin to religion. The experience of a few years has sufficiently demonstrated the possibility of arousing such interest: to make it universal is no more than a practical question of time, money and methods.

But no doubt when we come to modus operandi the main difficulty of the movement is the diversity of the classes it seeks to approach—diversity in individual capacity, in leisure, means, and previous training. Opposite policies have been urged upon us. Some have said: Whatever you do, you must never lower the standard; let the Extension movement present outside the universities precisely the same education as the universities themselves are giving, however long you may have to wait for its acceptance. On the other hand, it has been urged: You must go first where you are most needed; be content with a makeshift education until the people are ready for something better. The movement has accepted neither of these policies, but has made a distinction between two elements of university training—method and curriculum. So far as method is concerned we have considered that we are bound to be not less thorough, but more thorough, if possible, than the universities themselves, in proportion as our clients work under peculiar difficulties. But in the matter of curriculum we have felt it our first duty to be elastic, and to offer little or much as may in each case be desired. Accordingly, we have elaborated an educational unit—the three months' course of instruction in a single subject: this unit course we have used all the resources we could command for making as thorough in method as possible; where more than this is desired, we arrange that more in a combination or series of such unit courses. The instruction can thus be taken by retail or wholesale: but in all cases it, must be administered on the same rigorous method.

The key to the whole system is thus the unit course of three months' instruction in a single subject. The method of such a course is conveyed by the technical terms lecture, syllabus, exercises, class. The lectures are addressed to audiences as miscellaneous as the congregation of a church, or the people in a street car; and it is the duty of the teacher to attract such miscellaneous audiences, as well as to hold and instruct them. Those who do nothing more than simply attend the lectures will at least have gained the education of continuous interest; it is something to have one's attention kept upon the same subject for three months together. But it may be assumed that in every such audience there will be a nucleus of students, by which term we simply mean persons willing to do some work between one lecture and another. The lectures are delivered no oftener than once a week; for the idea is not that the lectures convey the actual instruction—great part of which is better obtained from books, but the office of the lecture is to throw into prominence the salient points of the study, and rouse the hearers to read, for themselves. The course of instruction is laid down in the syllabus—a document of perhaps thirty or forty pages, sold for a trifling sum; by referring for details to the pages of books this pamphlet can be made to serve as a text-book for the whole course, making the teacher independent in his order of exposition of any other text-book. The syllabus assists the general audience in following the lectures without the distraction of taking notes; and guides the reading and thinking of the students during the week. The syllabus contains a set of 'exercises' on each lecture. These exercises, unlike examination questions or 'quizzes,' are not tests of memory, but are intended to train the student to work for himself; they are thus to be done under the freest conditions—at home, with full leisure, and all possible access to books, notes or help from other persons. The written answers are sent to the lecturer for marginal comment, and returned by him at the 'class.' This class is a second meeting for students and others, at which no formal lecture is given, but there is free talk on points suggested to the teacher by the exercises he has received: the usual experience is that it is more interesting than the lecture. This weekly routine of lecture, syllabus-reading, exercise and class goes on for a period of twelve weeks. There is then an 'examination' in the work of the course held for students who desire to take it. Certificates are given by the university, but it is an important arrangement that these certificates are awarded jointly on the result of the weekly exercises and the final examination.