Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

This is the sure way to raise up a class of experts and investigators who will keep in touch with the sources of knowledge, and, by doing original work, contribute something new that will widen the horizon of knowledge and extend the empire of thought.

PREPARATION FOR SERVICE.

The function of the college is something more than developing men and women and promoting knowledge. Its aim is, likewise, to prepare the student for service. The knowledge and culture gained in college are only a means to an end. The student must not only know something, but be able to do something in the sphere of life. The ultimate object of all culture is to equip a person for life's work. Milton declares that the proper system of training is "that which fits man to perform justly and skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war;" and Herbert Spencer says that "the function which education has to discharge is to prepare us for complete living." And again, "the great object of education," says Emerson, "should be commensurate with the objects of life." The mind, placed in actual conscious relations with existing realities and phenomena, should be prepared for the largest service. To know, see, and learn the truth is a preparation for doing. The high type of manhood and womanhood which a liberal culture in college aims to promote should fit the student for every walk of life, in the family, society, church, and state.

The purpose of a college education should be twofold—professional and humanitarian—to prepare for one's vocation in life, and to cultivate humanitarian sympathies for the largest service. A person possessed of the humanitarian spirit realizes that the individual life is rooted in God, and consequently has a broader and deeper sense of human brotherhood, which enables him to keep in vital and sympathetic relation with human activity and experience. When these two aims blend, the best results are obtained, both for the individual and the community.

Aside from the scientific passion for knowledge, there is a view of culture, as Matthew Arnold puts it, "in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it—motives eminently such as are called social—come in as a part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part."

It is to be feared that in some colleges the ideals and spirit are such as to lead the student to place power on wealth above culture, and social position above usefulness. Professor J. M. Hart estimates that nearly one-half of the students who attend Cambridge and Oxford Universities, in England, do so not for the sake of study, but in order to form good social connections. Liberal culture should not be sacrificed to preparing men for idle social life and paying places. Colleges do not exist to train the students' powers for personal benefits, but to promote culture, to the end that a larger service may be rendered to human progress. "An education," says President Hill, "that fails in producing lofty character, sustained and nourished by a pure faith, may, indeed, fill the world with capable and masterly men in their vocation; but, unless it can soften the heart of success and open the palm of power, it only strengthens the grasp of greed, and misses the making of noble men."

The true conception of man and his duties leaves but little room for individualism or insolent self-assertion. No one can divorce himself from his fellow-men and their interests without lowering and debasing his own vocation in life, and becoming enfeebled and stunted in his own development. "The supreme object of the college," says President M. E. Gates, "is to give an education for power in social life." Every advancement in knowledge should tend to strengthen the bonds of human sympathy. Learning should be turned to the advantage of the people, and thus cause intelligence and helpfulness to go together. The great example of Christ teaches that a life of service is the only real human life. The quality of the student's character will be determined by his use or abuse of opportunity for service.

The very character of culture is social and beneficent. The great men of the world have most fully represented humanity. Touching the hearts of men, they have brought out the best of humanity in themselves, illustrating the truth of the divine law whereby we attain eminence, "Power to him who power exerts." The best thought not only contributes to the fulfillment of duty, but we receive impulse and mental activity by obedience to duty. Farrar says: "There are some who wish to know only to be known, which is base vanity; and some wish to know only that they may sell their knowledge, which is covetousness. There are some others who wish to know that they may be edified, and some that they may edify; that is heavenly prudence. In other words, the object of education is not for amusement, for fame, or for profit, but it is that one may learn to see and know God here, and to glorify Him in heaven hereafter. Our education is desired that, in the language of a Harrow prayer, we may become profitable members of the church and commonwealth, and hereafter partakers of the immortal glories of the resurrection." The measure and worth of a college should depend upon the pure and forceful character manifest in its students, and upon their willingness to employ the ability and knowledge acquired to serve the highest good of their fellow-men. The college that does this most efficiently will produce the best results.

When this conception of the function of a college is more thoroughly fixed upon the attention of educators and students, it may help to present in a clearer light some educational problems in regard to culture and practical training in college. On the one hand, there is a demand that the work of our colleges should become higher and more theoretical and scholarly, and, on the other hand, the utilitarian opinion and ideal of the function of a college is that the work should be more progressive and practical. One class emphasizes the importance of true culture and of making ardent, methodical, and independent search after truth, irrespective of its application; the other believes that practice should go along with theory, and that the college should introduce the student into the practical methods of actual life.

They are both, in a measure, right. There are forces at work in society to strengthen the demand that colleges teach the branches of industry, as well as prepare men for the so-called learned professions. The demand is based on the worth and dignity of intelligent labor. In fact, a scientific and technical education in some branch of industry has already won its way to the rank of a learned profession.