Chapter 6
The study of the English Bible in colleges is important in developing the will and the conscience, and in evoking religious feelings which have a practical influence on conduct. It certainly imparts a vigorous character to education, and brings men face to face with the facts of sin and its remedy. The presence of Christianity in the intellectual life of the student is corrective of selfishness and other vices which enslave the intellect and render life a disastrous failure.
It is encouraging to note that the study of the Bible is finding a place in the American college curriculum on a level with other studies, and time is allotted to attain a certain intellectual mastery of it. The active class instruction is as exacting and exhausting as any part of the college course. The student is led to trace the historic movements and to perceive the organic character, the literary forms and personal factors in its composition. The inductive method adopted develops original and independent students of the Word. The intellectual, devotional, and practical ends attained by this study are a powerful factor in upholding and maintaining the moral and spiritual character of the students.
Another method is that of _religious worship_. Students living in a community with a separate intellectual and social life should be required to meet daily for religious worship and instruction. The sacred moments spent in the college chapel by the whole college community are an appropriate recognition of the worth and power of the Christian religion, and do something to meet the spiritual needs and aspirations of the human soul. The daily gathering of the academic body to listen to a brief but suggestive exposition of scripture, and to unite in praise and prayer, cultivates reverence and devotion in the student, and will be regarded by many of them in after years as among the most delightful experiences in college life. If the religious services are not made perfunctory, but attractive and inspiring, in college, the students may pass to the university in their maturer years with devotional habits, and, likely, to avail themselves of its voluntary system of daily religious exercises.
The colleges should ever keep in view the original aim of the founders to make them centers of evangelical power. Piety, however, should not be a substitute for honest scholarly work. They should never permit their enthusiasm for an intellectual training and the growth of the sciences to obscure or conceal Him who is the Light and Life of all men. Their immediate and primary aim should be to promote intellectual culture, but this in nowise involves a departure from the spirit of the forefathers who made them agencies for defending and propagating the gospel, and for leading the youth to remember that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
It is evident, then, that the function of the college is to unfold the intellectual, physical, moral, and spiritual life of the young people, and especially to form character that shall be fully equipped for carrying out the divine purpose of life.
THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE.
Another function of the American college is to extend the objective field of knowledge. The enlarged range of knowledge in our day is owing principally to the clear thinking and earnest, original, productive work done by college professors and students. They have done more to extend the empire of thought than any other class of intellectual workers. The college is the home of the arts and sciences, and it exists to teach and promote them. Professors should have the ability and the time, more and more, to make investigations, to extend the domain of truth, and to give philosophical and scientific guidance to the nation.
The university proper, as now being developed, regards as its special function the training of men for research and professional work. Its ample facilities and its methods of work give advanced students rare privileges in any department of research.
"The modern university," says Professor Josiah Royce, "has its highest business, to which all else is subordinate, the organization and advance of learning. Not that the individual minds are now neglected. They are wisely guarded as the servants of the one great cause. But the real mind which the university has to train is the mind of the nation--that concrete social mind whereof we all are ministers and instruments. The daily business of the university is, therefore, first of all, the creation and the advance of learning, as the means whereby the national mind can be trained."
The constructive intellectual spirit so paramount in the university begins in the college. The more formal methods of disciplinary work at the beginning of a collegiate course gradually shade off, during the closing years, into the methods and spirit of original discovery adopted in university work. In the college there is kindled in the student the love of new truth and an enthusiasm for the advancement of learning. He is led to undertake creative work, and become an active, intellectual producer, with aspirations to widen the horizon of thought and weave the best results of his discoveries into the warp and woof of the social organism.
The steps leading up to the important period in the student's life where research is for the sake of fruitfulness are traceable in the historic development and requirements of college studies. In nearly all the colleges there is manifest a growing spirit of freedom in pursuing a course of study. There is little doubt that elective courses of study are a recognized necessity and benefit. It remains, however, an open question what studies should be required and what elected, and when the work of specialization should begin. If we keep in view the fact that the primary aim of a college education is to elevate and broaden the student by training him to clear and exact thought and accurate observation and expression, we will see that, whatever the course or subject of study chosen, it is only the means to this end.
Required studies should be based upon the principle of the instrumental, substantive and interpretative elements in a liberal education. For example, the study of language is important as the instrument of thought. A knowledge of the rich and copious foreign languages opens up the wisdom of the past and present, and their study develops memory and precision, as well as stimulates and provokes thought. A knowledge of some of them is essential to the highest professional success. The student who can read and appreciate the foreign languages and appropriate their contents has a decided advantage.
Mathematics is, likewise, an instrument of thought. It is the foundation of the physical sciences and the framework of the material universe. Its study trains the mind to think in relations and quantities, and helps to obviate loose and confused thinking. Logic and psychology are also important factors in developing the power of orderly and protracted thought.
The substantive element in a liberal education is found in the study of the natural and moral sciences. The study of them is both attractive and stimulating, and helps to store the mind with useful facts and principles. A general study of science should be required. A knowledge of any favorite science involves in some measure a knowledge of others. Physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, are all more or less related. There is an interacting and interweaving of the facts and principles. Aside from the information imparted, there is no other class of study that will so effectively train the mind to accurate habits of observation.
Philosophy is the interpretative element in education, and helps to give unity to our knowledge. No one can reasonably lay claim to be liberally educated who has not some knowledge of the philosophical principles which underlie and explain the phenomena of history and life.
These required studies should be embraced and upheld in all college courses in order to give unity and consistency to the knowledge of the student. The value of these different studies cannot be reasonably doubted. The colleges of the past developed strength by studying these few subjects. No technical studies or professional training can be substituted for this scholastic training. The professional man especially needs this general culture, in order to escape the danger of concentrating and contracting his intellectual interest. Colleges may vigorously adhere to these scholarly requirements, and yet advantageously introduce the elective system. The student must have depth as well as breadth of scholarship. This can be effectively done by the specialization which the elective system affords. The character of the different studies chosen, however, should have a cohesive and logical connection in order to secure concentration and attain the best results.
The student who has had the advantages of a thorough preliminary training for admission to college, and has done faithful work in the required studies of the Freshman and Sophomore years, should have acquired such mental discipline and reached such a plane of scholarship that he is prepared for the more advanced work in special studies looking toward his life work. He should then be allowed to choose, within reasonable limits, those subjects for study during the Junior and Senior years in which his natural aptitudes and modes of thought would lead him to seek the highest degree of proficiency. This plan accords with the German system of education at the point where the student leaves the required work of the gymnasium and enters upon the elective work of the university. The most aggressive colleges in America have adopted this method, and are satisfied with the results.
The elective system is beset with difficulties. Liberty is always subject to abuse, but the best attainments are found where negligence and mental trifling are possible. The advantages, however, are many. When the student decides upon a course of study suited to his real or imaginary needs, he exhibits more enthusiasm than if it is imposed. He is spurred on to his best effort, and develops personal power in original work. He gains depth and breadth of training, and is better fitted for more extended study in a university where the means and facilities are unlimited for the highest attainments in technical and professional training.
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.
The demand for industrial education has grown out of a reorganization of the industries and trades of the world. The great industries of the country require men of trained minds and directive intelligence to organize and control them. Mechanical skill is in great demand, and workmen must be trained not merely in dexterity and skill in the use of tools, but they must be so instructed in the principles governing science that they shall be able to reach results of the highest practical value in the sciences and arts. This age requires better mechanics, manufacturers, foremen, architects, farmers, and engineers--men whose creative genius will help to awaken the aspirations of the race to master the forces of nature and bring in an era of more convenience, comfort, and leisure for the cultivation of the mind and heart.
Our systems of education are planning to meet the needs of the people. Manual training that is adapted to youth between twelve and seventeen years of age is incorporated in the curricula of many of the existing public schools. Besides, we have in the United States more than one hundred advanced schools in technology founded as independent organizations. One-third of them have shops for laboratory practice.
The fact that such a prominent place has been given to the physical and practical sciences in the courses of study in colleges shows that these institutions are responding to the constantly increasing demands of a practical age. Scientific departments have been advantageously established in connection with our well-endowed universities. It is both desirable and practicable to give instruction in mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering in our high grade colleges. This should not be done, however, at the expense of liberal culture.
How far the colleges can meet the demand for technical and practical education depends upon their condition and resources. They cannot make bricks without straw. Wealthy men cannot perform a more generous act than to help establish these schools of technology in connection with our colleges, in order to give instruction in the practical and useful arts of life.
There is danger, perhaps, in pressing the utilitarian principle in education too far. It is not the colleges that make the greatest show of utility that develop the most effective men. In the effort to secure a practical education, it is important not to lessen the power to understand and apply the foundation principles which underlie actual practice.
In the German universities the practical and technical are left alone. Professor J. M. Hart says of them that their "chief task, that to which all their energies are directed, is to develop great thinkers--men who will extend the boundaries of knowledge." We are under different conditions in this country, but the importance of the principle should not be overlooked. Every one has not the desire or ability to be a great scholar and thinker, but preparation for all the so-called practical careers of life should at least carry the student through the rigorous discipline of a college course up to the Junior year, when he may elect studies of a more technical nature looking to his life work. This is the best way to get a profound insight into principles from which to deduce practice and promote the interests of human society.
Professor Josiah Royce has well said that "the result of this 'conflict' between the two ideals of academic work has been the union of both in the effort of all concerned to build up a system of university training whose ideal is at once one of scholarly method and of scientific comprehension of fact. For the scholar, as such, be he biologist, or grammarian, or metaphysician, the exclusive opposition between 'words' and 'things' has no meaning. He works to understand truth, and the truth is at once word and thing, thought and object, insight and apprehension, law and content, form and matter. * * * There is no science unexpressed; there is no genuine expression of truth that ought not to seek the form of science."
The importance of scientific theories leading to the best practical results is illustrated in the case of Columbus, whose investigations led him to believe in the sphericity of the earth and the probability of land in the far West. "Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune simultaneously and independently, simply because certain observations had revealed perturbations that could be most naturally accounted for by the existence of an unknown planet." After Professor Helmholtz and others had made known the subtle laws of the transmission of sound, there was only a step to its practical application in the use of the telephone.
The essential condition in all industrial and social progress is the acquisition of judgement, skill, and foresight by patient study of facts and principles. It is energy within the being that gives birth to achievement in the outward sphere of practical life. It is certainly the prerogative of the colleges to extend the best educational opportunities to the people. It should embrace their intellectual and industrial pursuits.
The lofty and sacred purpose to render the highest service, to advance the welfare of men, is best reached by training men and women for leadership. The demand for educated and influential Christian leadership is greater than the supply. In 1890 there were about 15,000,000 pupils in the public schools receiving elementary instruction, while only one in 455 of the population was under superior instruction in colleges. The majority of this small number will be among the real leaders of the country. The character of the nation will, in a large measure, depend on the character of the colleges which train and shape these leaders.