College prolongs infancy - Horace Meyer Kallen

386 Fourth Avenue, New York

COLLEGE PROLONGS INFANCY

COLLEGE PROLONGS
INFANCY

by
HORACE M. KALLEN

New York
THE JOHN DAY COMPANY

Printed in U. S. A.
by The Stratford Press, Inc.,
New York City

AN IRONIST reviewing higher education in America since 1920 would find himself struck by three things.

First, perhaps, he would appreciate the gargantuan inflation of pedagogic lore, with its elaborate formalism, its pretensions to precise measurements of mind and character, its blowing up “scientific method” into a meticulous ceremonial with the efficacy of a church ritual. Second, the overgrowth of the educational plant might captivate him: the immense accretion of endowment, the blowsy additions to properties, and the multiplication by millions of teachers and students. Lastly, our ironist might admire a wide and spreading unrest about the effectiveness of the system as an instrument of education. He would take note of much fuss and ferment respecting “progressive education” and “adult education.” He would overhear oracles by parents, teachers, and college presidents on why students do anything but study and on how to make them study. He would discern how the prescriptions vary, all the way from Mr. Lowell’s house-system at Harvard University to Mr. Meiklejohn’s “experimental college” at the University of Wisconsin. As a popular alternative, the suggestion would intrigue him that far more students are enrolled than are “fit” for the higher education, and that this aristocratic privilege should be limited to the “fit” alone; the “fit,” of course, being those young people who are shown to be as nearly like their teachers as differences of age, income and interest permit.