The principal circumstance that retards our university development doubtless is that the ideal of American life itself, which the university is to express and to promote, is as yet undefined in the minds of the American people. But without presuming to anticipate what must be the outcome of gradual and prolonged growth, it may still be serviceable to clear our minds as to the goal towards which we desire that the development shall tend. The fundamental ideal of the American people is that of freedom! The notion of freedom is crude as yet, but is capable of being ennobled and refined. To be free is to express power. To be free in the highest sense is to express the highest kind of power. The highest kind is that which is exercised in such wise as to elicit unlike yet cognate power in others. A people is to be called free when all the different social or vocational groups of which it is the integrated whole spontaneously react upon one another, and when in each group each member of it realizes some mental gift of his own. A free people is not one which is merely released from the authority of autocrats. That is only a condition of freedom, not freedom itself. A free people is not one in which strong individuals are permitted to thrive parasitically at the expense of the weak. Nor yet one in which merely equal opportunity is afforded to all in the race for material well-being. A free people is one in which the essential energies of all effectuate themselves unhindered, the life of each swelling the surrounding tide of life, and being enriched in turn by the returning tide. This to my mind is liberty,—the liberation of what is best in each. This is freedom,—the free flow of life into life. The ideal American University is one which expresses and promotes this ideal of freedom.
A university is a group of vocational schools. A truly democratic university is an organic system of vocational schools, one which in the relations that subsist between its schools affords a shining, stimulating example of the kind of relations that ought to subsist between the vocational groups in the state.
The aim of an American university should be to furnish leaders for all the various groups who will undertake the great business of truly organizing democracy.
Education for Adults
Education should be continuous through life. The University Extension movement is endeavoring to meet this demand. It has already to its credit a considerable extension of knowledge, as well as the stirring up of interest in things of the mind among those whom it reaches. But far greater tasks than it has yet attacked remain. The academic method is not suited to the instruction of adults. A method will have to be worked out for teaching a subject to mature minds different from that which is appropriate in introducing the subject to the relatively immature minds of students. The student who has not yet entered vocational life needs to be put in possession of the principles by which he can lay hold of life. A mature person who is deficient in theoretical education needs to be helped to interpret his vocational experience in such a manner as to find his way back to the principles. In the one case there is the outlook and the emptiness; in the other case the fullness of content without the comprehensive outlook.
Secondly, the stages of vocational development through which the worker has already passed in his vocation are to be borne in mind, and the teaching adapted to the different stages. I have suggested four divisions: that of apprenticeship, that of initial mastery, that of more complete mastery, and the emeritus stage.[84]
Thirdly, it is getting to be increasingly difficult for a specialist in any one branch to keep abreast of the progress made in other branches. Popularization of the ordinary kind does not satisfy. It means, as a rule, diluting the subject-matter, not truly simplifying it. Provision should be made, in any large and generous scheme of public education, for enabling ripe minds to assimilate the ripest fruits produced by contemporary thinkers and writers who work in other fields.
NOTE
A few outstanding points in regard to what is called Moral Education may be added to this chapter.
There should be ethical teaching in the universities. The kinds of ethics taught should be adapted to the university period of life, emphasis being put on the experiences of the student at that time of life,—on friendship, the sex relation, the vocational outlook, etc. be included in the programme for the education of adults.
Systematic moral education in schools and high schools is advisable. It is frequently criticised on the ground that it is apt to be schematic and unreal. Moral counsels given as the occasion arises are believed to be more effective. They hit the nail on the head and drive it home. The reply to this is that incidental moral advice and exhortation is not excluded, but that it by no means adequately answers the purpose. The occasions for giving the necessary guidance simply do not arise. This kind of moral teaching is apt to be patchy. In the next place, ethical instruction, when rightly planned, has two objects: the one to bring into clear relief the life axioms that underlie the entire home and school experience of the pupil, and secondly, to give to the pupil a provisional chart and compass or ethical outlook upon his future life. Ethical teaching conceived of and conducted in this manner is neither schematic nor artificial. It does not drive home a nail here and there, it constructs a mental house in which the mind of the pupil can be at home,—with windows in it, looking out upon a large landscape outside.
The capital significance of right relations, ethical relations, between the members of the teaching staff has been noted in the text. In every school clubs should be formed consisting of pupils specially interested in any one subject and of the special teachers of that subject:—or if not formal clubs, then at least more intimate personal relations should exist between the special teacher and those selected pupils, the object being through personal intercourse to introduce the young aspirant to a knowledge of the problems on which the older person is intent. There is nothing nearly so educative for the young as to be taken into the counsels of their elders.
The more gifted pupils of the school should be invited to take a personal interest in helping the more backward students. In every school, high school and university there are social misfits,—shy, sensitive, solitary youths who fail to come into easy touch with their fellows, and suffer acutely. They are objects of the most delicate, deferential charity, and the task of bringing them into fellowship offers one of the finest opportunities for ethical education.
A vital system of self-government is to be used as a means of placing real responsibility upon the students under due advice. To exercise responsibility is to acquire character. Self-government is particularly important so far as it relates to the administration of justice in a school. Cases of discipline should be used as means to create the right conception of punishment, the right attitude towards those who have erred.
The relation between the adolescent boy and girl and the parents is of prime significance as illustrating in a way that young persons can understand the general conception of the ethical relation as reciprocal. The youth should be shown that he can be not only the recipient but a giver of benefits, that he can be a real help to his parents, chiefly by sympathetically entering into the problems and difficulties with which they have to contend. The parents, instead of being regarded by the young as an earthly providence, existing only for the purpose of bestowing benefits, should be seen in their true light as struggling, and often heavily burdened human beings. At the same time the young son or daughter will in this way gain an invaluable preparation for comprehending the difficulties under which the effort to live must be carried on.
In regard to patriotism, it is important that the errors and mistakes committed by one’s nation in the past should not be overlooked or minimized.
The school should furnish to the students various outlets for social service such as they in their period of life are capable of rendering.