“But how can they secure an education unless they are solicitous about scholarship, Garvin?”
“Oh, I see what is the matter, Priddy. You imagine that because so many of us aren’t interested in scholarship, pure scholarship, we aren’t interested in education. Education and scholarship are two very different things.”
“How do you argue that?”
“You have the old-fashioned idea of a college,” continued Garvin.
“What do you mean?”
“The old New England college: the representative college of olden days, injected a love of books and the wisdom of books in their students: reams of the classic poets and prose writers: encyclopædic furnishings of the mind with the contents of a few good, stimulating books. Those were the hey-days of pure scholarship. They have existed here: but we students, today, are illustrations of an evolution in educational ideals, even if most of us don’t seem to realize it. We represent the changed temper of higher education. If I may phrase, offhand, my idea of the change,—it is that the older generation considered pure scholarship, in itself, the central aim of a college course, and to an ideal of that sort, Scholarship Nights, Phi Beta Kappas, and all such educational fashions were not only in keeping but were producers of tremendous enthusiasms. On the other hand, what seems to me to lie in the heart of the students now is the demand for scholarship,—plus accomplishment. It is due, no doubt, to the practical turn of the world during the last few years. I am interested mightily in scholarship when it helps towards actual accomplishment: when like a gold coin it purchases something; unlike the old notion that scholarship was a gold or silver medal, good only to decorate or dignify the person, or to be kept on exhibition.”
“Are you sincere in that, Garvin?” I demanded. “If so, you should write it out in editorials, for the criticism of the professors: if you could substantiate it by concrete facts.”
“Concrete facts, Priddy! Why, it would carry us into the small hours of the morning if I were to begin their enumeration. Take Ellis, for instance. You tell me that he went into the medal contest to vindicate the athletes. There is one example of the coin of scholarship purchasing something: one concrete expression of the student interest in scholarship when it leads to something practical and concrete. Can you imagine Ellis going into a literary contest that would wind up in itself, without relation to something practical to be gained by it?”
“No.”
“You go around the campus with a test like that, Priddy, and you will find that scholarship is highly respected wherever it has resulted in accomplishment. Don’t we respect Professor Florette? I should say we did. One of the most perfect scholars in the college and yet even the grafters among the students would throw their caps in the air at any time for the Professor, and why is it? It is because his scholarship has actually made him accomplish something. He is president of the National Science Division of College Instruction and is known and quoted abroad as an authority in his line. That’s why the students like him. On the other hand you might pick out a professor here and a professor there who is very erudite—notice my vocabulary, Priddy—and who is a perfect scholar in his department, and yet who never translates his knowledge into life: never writes a useful book, or influences thought abroad, or is asked to address even a Kindergarten Teachers’ Convention. All we know of him is that ‘he is a scholar.’ You don’t catch us shouting much for that man, do you? He has not accomplished anything tangible, ergo—his scholarship is merely an esthetic satisfaction. That’s why we fellows prefer old Florette.”