Of other advantages of educational institutions I shall not now speak. They are manifold. Our youth of both sexes, whatever their callings in life, would do well to seek these advantages. Therefore parents, primary teachers, and older persons who influence youth, should constantly place before them the benefits of college education, and inspire them to reach after and attain it. Arguments should be used, appeals made, assistance proffered, that a larger percentage of American youth may aspire after college privileges, or at least remain for a longer term in the best schools of a higher grade. Haste to be rich, restiveness under restraint during the age of unwisdom, inability to regulate by authority at home the eager and ambitious life of our youth, together with false, mercenary notions of parents, who “can not afford to have so much time spent by the young folks in studying, because they must be doing something for themselves”—these are some of the causes of the depreciation and neglect of the American college—a neglect lamentable enough, and fraught with harm to the nation.
Chautauqua lifts up her voice in favor of liberal education for a larger number of people. She would pack existing institutions until wings must be added to old buildings, and new buildings be put up to accommodate young men and maidens who are determined to be educated.
Chautauqua would exalt the profession of the teacher until the highest genius, the richest scholarship, and the broadest manhood and womanhood of the nation would be consecrated to this service.
Chautauqua would give munificent salaries and put a premium on merit, sense, tact, and culture in the teacher’s office. She would turn the eyes of all the people—poor and rich, mechanics and men of other, if not higher degree, toward the high school and the college, urging house builders, house owners, house keepers, farmers, blacksmiths, bankers, millionaires, to prepare themselves by a true culture, whatever niche they fill in life, to be men and women, citizens, parents, members of society, members of the church, candidates for immortal progress.
To promote these ends the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle was organized. By its courses of popular reading it gives a college outlook to the uncultivated, and exalts the higher learning. It is, as I have elsewhere said, a John the Baptist preparing the way for seminary and university.
The managers of the Chautauqua movement, however, recognize the fact that there are thousands of full-grown men and women who are at their best intellectually, and who, with some leisure and much longing, believe they could do more than read. They want to study; to study in downright earnest; to develop mental power; to cultivate taste; to increase knowledge, to make use of it by tongue and pen and life. There are tens of thousands of young people out of school by necessities commercial and filial, who are awakened to the power within and the possibilities beyond. They believe they could learn a language, and enjoy the literature of it. They believe they could think and grow, speak and write. They are willing, and eager to try. Out of minutes they could construct college terms. They have will enough, heart enough, brain enough to begin, to go on, to go through, and all this, while the everyday life continues with its duty for this hour and for that. They believe that into the closely woven texture of everyday, home and business life, there may be drawn threads of scarlet, crimson, blue and gold, until their homespun walls become radiant with form and color worthy to decorate the royal chamber—the chamber of their king, God the Father of earnest souls.
Chautauqua denounces the talk of certain rich men about the “poor having their place,” and that it would be “better for working people to confine themselves to work, or at best to understand subjects bearing entirely on their everyday duties in field or shop, and let science and literature alone.” Chautauqua would make working men cultivated, and give them recreation from manual toil in realms of wonder, taste, science, literature and art. Chautauqua would spread out over the lot of the toiler a dome, vast, radiant, rich and inspiring.
Therefore the Chautauqua School of Liberal Arts has been organized, and chartered with full university powers, for non-resident pupils, who, by correspondence with competent instructors, may study what they please, when they please, and as they please, eliciting suggestion, and giving answer and thesis, taking all the time they need, passing final examination in writing in the presence of witnesses, and having their examination papers subjected to the scrutiny of competent and impartial critics. When, after the required standard in the several departments which constitute the college course has been attained, whether in four, or ten, or fourteen years, the successful candidate shall have his diploma and his degree; and through this window he has constructed out of all these fragments of time—fragments picked up from dusty floor and pavement, from mine, and field, and shop—through this window the light shall shine in its beauty, and people shall see what genius, industry and persistent will can do with the cast away fragments of spare moments and random opportunities.
I have thus described the “Upper Chautauqua.” By reason of the action of the Board of Managers, elsewhere reported, the plan of gradation is slightly changed from that laid down in the previous article on the “Upper Chautauqua,” and the following successive steps are found in the scheme of the Chautauqua University:
1. The Assembly, including the summer meetings, the “Platform,” “the American Church Sunday-school Normal Course,” the “School of Languages,” and the “Teachers’ Retreat.”