"My country, 'tis of thee!" / Or, the United States of America; past, present and future. A philosophic view of American history and of our present status, to be seen in the Columbian exhibition.

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

CHAPTER XXV.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION.

AMERICA has more colleges, so called, than all the other civilized nations combined.

These institutions of learning are not results of accident, or accretions of church reverences and purposes, like the great universities of older lands. Most of them were founded and have been maintained by the people at large, and these, until recent times, were very poor. They are testimonials to the level-head and tenacity of purpose of the American people. Says President Gilman, of Johns Hopkins University:

“That tenacity of purpose with which a few settlers in the wilderness held on to the idea of a liberal education, in spite of their scanty crops and scantier libraries, their wide separation from the old-world seats of learning, and their lack of professional teachers, is one of the noblest of many noble traits possessed by our forefathers, who were never so weary or so poor that they could not keep alive the altar-fires in the temples of religion and of learning. Their primitive foundations did not depend on royal bounty or on feudal liens; they were supported by free-will offerings from men and women in moderate circumstances, by the minister’s savings and the widow’s portion. It is only within the present generation that large donations have reached their coffers. The good and the bad we inherit in our collegiate systems were alike developed in the straitened school of necessity.

“The founders of the original colleges were not only high-minded and self-sacrificing, but they were devoted to an ideal. They believed in the doctrine that intellectual power is worth more than intellectual acquisitions; that an education of all the mental faculties is better for the happiness of individual scholars and for the advancement of the community than a narrow training for a special pursuit. Accordingly, their educational system did not begin with professional seminaries, for the special training of any one class, but with schools of general culture, colleges of the liberal arts, as good as could be made with their resources and in that age. Instead of an academic staff made up of those who professed to teach some special branch of knowledge, these colleges had a master and fellows (or tutors), men who were fit to teach others those rudiments of higher learning in which they had themselves been taught. Moreover, as years rolled on, instead of concentrating personal and pecuniary support upon a few of the oldest and most promising foundations, far-sighted men built up in every portion of the land colleges corresponding in their principal features with the original foundations, and depending for maintenance on the beneficence of individuals.

“The history of the colonial foundations abounds in examples of the wisdom and self-sacrifice with which they were conducted under circumstances which called for devotion to a lofty ideal. No one can study the biography of their graduates without discovering that they were the men who moulded the institutions of this country. It is easy to point out deficiencies in these academic organizations, as it is to criticise the defects of the emigrants’ cabins and the foresters’ paths; it is easy to lament that a deeper impression was not made upon the scholarship of the world; easy to mention influential men who never passed a day within college walls; easy to provoke a smile, a sneer, or a censure by the record of some narrow-minded custom or proceeding. But, nevertheless, the fact cannot be shaken that the old American colleges have been admirable places for the training of men. Let the roll of graduates of any leading institution be scrutinized, or even the record of a single class selected at random, and it will be seen that the number of life failures is very small, and the number of useful, intelligent, high-minded and upright careers very large. It may, therefore, be said that the traditional college, though commonly hampered by ancient conditions and by the lack of funds with which to attain its own ideal, has remained the firm and valiant supporter of liberal culture, and that any revolutionary or rabid changes in its organization or methods should be carefully watched. Nevertheless, as we proceed, it will be evident that changes are inevitable and that most desirable improvements are in progress. The child is becoming a man.”

But we need more concentration of effort, money and good men, both as instructors and students, in colleges where the highest education may be obtained. The great number of our colleges is a source of weakness—not of strength. A great number of these institutions are mere academies, and seem to have been founded principally to keep students within the denominational fences of their parents; the college is charged with what should be the special work of parent and pastor. Says President Gilman:

“Every important Christian denomination has come to have its distinctive college, and many an argument has been framed to prove that sectarian colleges are better than those which seek to promote the union of several religious bodies. It has not been thought sufficient that a college should be pervaded by an enlightened Christianity, nor even that it should be the stronghold of a simple evangelical life and doctrine, nor that it should be orthodox as to the fundamental teachings of the Church; but sectarian influences must everywhere predominate, among the trustees or in the faculty, or in both the governing bodies. Hence we see all over the land feeble, ill-endowed and poorly manned institutions, caring a little for sound learning, but a great deal more for the defence of denominational tenets.”

President Eliot, of Harvard, thus indicates the results of this spirit, added to another which is still less pardonable:

“In the absence of an established church, or of a dominant sect in the United States, denominational zeal has inevitably tended to scatter even those scanty resources which in two centuries have become available for the higher education; and this lamentable dissipation has been increased by the local pride of States, cities and neighborhoods, and the desire of many persons, who had money to apply to public uses, to found new institutions rather than to contribute to those already established—a desire not unnatural in a new country, where love of the old and venerable in institutions has but just sprung up. In short, the different social, political and religious conditions of this country have, thus far, quite prevented the development of commanding universities like those of the mother-country.”