Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/declinerevivalofOOstarrich
(M
THE DECLINE
AND
REVIVAL OF PUBLIC INTEREST
IN COLLEGE EDUCATION
An Address Delivered before the Graduates of Oberlin C01.1.EGE June 20th 1893
By MERRITT STARR, A. M., LL. B.
(a. B., oberlin, 1875; A. B. AND LL. B., HARVARD, t88l.)
CHICAGO
PRESS OF CHARLES W. MAGILL
,893
THE DECLINE
AND
REVIVAL OF PUBLIC INTEREST
IN ^COLLEGE EDUCATION
An Address Delivered before the Graduate>s of Oberlin College June 20th 1893
By MERRITT STARR, A. M., LL. B.
(A. B., OBERUN, 1875; A. B. AND I.L. B., HARVARD, t88i.>
CHICAGO
PRESS OF CHARLES W. MAGILL
'893
The Decline and Revival of Public Interest IN College Education.
OUTLINE
I.
1. There has been such a decline, recently followed by a revival. This is shown by statistics.
2. The decline and revival are incidental to the larger tendency toward centralization.
II.
What is being done, and what can be done, to check the decline? What has caused the revival ?
How can the general public and the masses be inspired with fresh confi- dence in the colleges ?
1. By fuller instruction in the history and causes of the present popular and public movements, and of popular and public movements in general. That is, by instruction in social science. Sociology embraces the needed studies.
2. By teaching the useful arts.
3. By university extension work and the university settlement.
III.
These branches' and forms of work are valuable, not merely for their influence upon public interest. They are necessary parts of the best education, and necessary to the preservation of our institutions.
The philanthropic purpose in which the colleges were founded is best sub- served to-day by such instruction and work.
Note. — I have received valuable assistance in the preparation of the tables of statistics from Mr. Glenn E. Plumb, '91 O. C
The Decline and Revival of Public Interest IN College Education.
Mr. President, Ladies a7id GeiiUemen : I count myself fortunate in being called to address you to-day.
The occasion itself is one that I prize ; and the subject upon which I am permitted to speak has long been near my heart.
I bring a message of good cheer.
While the facts which I have to present are in some respects such as to excite apprehension, yet their deeper meaning is that the opportunity for phil- anthropical educational work was never so great as now, and that its rewards were never so sure.
We love the day, because in it we celebrate our Alma Mater's birthday, and the commencement day for each one of us as well. We come back from the wander-jahre of twenty years to visit the old homestead once more. For each one of us the day has its special meaning ; it stands for the love of Alma Mater, the birthplace of better intellectual life and fellowship. It signifies to us that culture is a basis of brotherhood. lyooking back, the whole of our ong and struggling period of school life seems fore-shortened into a group of beautiful commencement days. The best life of each class, of each society, of each youthful scholar and orator and singer, shone out in those days, and the light of those anniversaries throws its halo over the whole long procession of years. The marks of progress are so numerous and pervading that we have difficulty to recognize the old landmarks and find the old paths. We rejoice in the advancement of the college; we feel enriched by her prosperity. When we roamed these streets as Juniors, or sat by the fire of an evening, after the next morning's lessons were prepared, we used to grow warm with enthusiasm for the brave men who made her past. We used to hope that in some happier time .she might be blest by benefactors who could give her nobler residence- We anticipated for her a prosperous future ; and now we are gratified to see these noble buildings of stone rising among the trees, and to realize that Spear and Talcott and Lord and Baldwin and Peters and Sturges and Warner Halls have been added to the housing of the school. They fulfill in part the dreams of our youth. They are part of the
" — castles fair with stately stairways,"
that we u$ed to build in fireside fancies, as somewhat worthy of the high en- deavor and splendid purpose with which the first foundations were laid. There
But still we and
comes at times a nameless pang that many of the older landmarks have dis- appeared— that we no more can
" — pass beside the reverend walls, In which of old we wore the gown — "
" — rove at random through the town, And see the tumult of the halls;"
" — hear once more in college fanes The storm their high built organs make, And thunder music rolling shake The prophets blazoned on the panes."
We still may pace these streets and see the monument that commemorates the patriotism of Company C, and the other soldier boys ; though we miss the Laboratory and Tappan Hall, and Ladies' Hall and Colonial Hall, we have found French and Society Halls still here as of old ; have entered the deserted class rooms ; have seen
; " — the same gray flats again, and felt The same, but not the same; and last Up that long walk of elms we past To see the rooms in which we dwelt: —
And those
Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art. And labor, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land."
We are gratified that ten years have seen the Faculty grow in the num- ber of professors and instructors from forty-five to eighty-eight ; that the elective privilege has grown from nothing in 1873 to the magnificent list of electives of advanced studies covering thirty-five terms' work or twelve full college years, in 1893 5 ^^^ that the total number of hours of class instruction offered by the college now reaches the magnificent number of 11,065. When we reflect that the old fashioned normal college course consisted of four years of thirty-six weeks each, and that each week's instruction consisted of three hours of class work a day for five days in the week, or fifteen hours a week, 180 hours a term, or 540 hours a year, or in four years 2,160 hours of class work; and reflect that 11,065 ^^^ offered the student now, while two full years have been added to the Literary course, once known as the Ladies' course, and two years more to the preparatory department, which has now been wisely separated from the college and made an academy, we realize that more than five times as much instruction is afforded now as then, and that the outward growth has been even surpassed by that within.
This is in every way gratifying to the alumni. It shows that the younger faculty of to-day have comprehended the measure of the example set before them, and have labored with loyalty to the spirit of the past.
Turning backward a moment, it is ten years since we gathered to celebrate the semi-centennial of the college. It is twenty years since I first entered these walls. The tendencies of these twenty years is the subject to which I invite your attention.
4
As I turn from the glowing picture of our Alma Mater's growth, I recall an incident in the English parliamentary campaign of 1885, related by James Russell Lowell. During the campaign Mr. Lowell attended a hustings meet- ing, which was held in an old church turned into a hall. The church soon was crowded to suffocation, and before addresses began it became necessary to open the windows to secure ventilation. The committee found the windows of the old church immovable, and then decided to have several of them broken open. Fearing that the noise of the breaking might create a patiic in the crowd, they asked the mayor of the city to explain the proceeding from the platform and allay any tendency to fright. The mayor, who was an elderly baronet and well educated man stepped forward to the edge of the platform and began his announcement, but was interrupted by continual cries of "Gladstone," "Glad- stone," and could not make himself heard, until he finally exclaimed: "Look here ! I ain't a-going to make a speech. I've got something to say !" — which secured attention. His phrase expresses my feelings to-day ; let me invite your attention then to the following facts :
Looking beyond our own college walls to the history of the higher education in the country as a whole, we find most striking evidences of a decline and revival of public interest therein. After full recognition of the marvelous growth of our educational institutions, and of the expansion of educational work, when we examine the record of the growth of our popu- lation, wealth and institutions, we are compelled to admit that the educational growth has not kept pace with the growth in the other fields.
It is not a subject for which blame can be attached to any one, or to any institution. The explanations of this fact are many. The vast immigration of a population which has been mainly of little education, and little desire for education, is perhaps the easiest explanation and the best one. The attend- ance upon colleges since 1873 as announced by the National Commissioner of Education may be summarized as follows :
TABLE I. ATTENDANCE AT AMERICAN COLLEGES.
1874 56,692
1875 58,894
1876 56,481
1877 57,334
1878 57,987
1879. 60,111
1 880 60, 594
1881 62,435
1882 64,096
1883 not found in Government Reports.
1884 --65,522
1885 .65,728
1886 ._ ..67,642
1887 70,024
1888..... .75.333
1889 :.. 86,996
These statistics show plainly the effect of the financial depression following the year 1873. We hppe that no similar decline will follow the financial re- action of 1893.
The relation of college attendance to total population of the country is shown by the following table :
TABLE II.
|
Year. |
Population. |
College Attendance. |
Population. Percent- age of increase over that of preceeding decade. |
College Attendance. Percentage of in- crease or decrease. (Decrease represent- ed by minus sign.) |
|
1860 1870 1880 1887 1888 |
31,443,321 38,558,371 50,155,783 58,882,312 (e) 60,128,958(6) 61,375,604 (e) 62,622,250 63,868,897(6) 65,115,544 (6) |
54,969 (a) 49,163 (b) 60,594 (c) 70,024 (c) 75,333 (d) 86,996 (d) 102,970 107,234 114,419 |
•22,^^ •30^, •IVA (*> .20 (f) .22 •24-«Q«o .24 .24 |
-15 .23 .15(f) .25 (f) |
|
1889 1890 1891 |
.43 .41 |
|||
|
1892 |
(a) From census of 1860, Observations on Education, page xi.
(b) From Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1879, pagre 104.
(c) From Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1887-8, page 632.
(d) From 2d Vol. Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1888-9, page 1C95.
(e) Population of 1887, 1888 and 1889 have been estimated by taking the population of 1890 and de- ducting respectively 1, 2 and 3 tenths from the increase since 1880. For 1891 and 1892 by adding 1 and 2 tenths respectively. Population for 1860, 1870, 1880 and 1890 taken from census returns.
(f) The percentages in general are calculated upon the totals of the preceding census year. Thus the population of 1870 shows an increase over that of 1860 by .22 63-100 per cent of that of 1860. For 1887 and 1888 in each case the percentages are calculated upon the totals of 1880 as a principal.
The date of college attendance for 1890, 1891 and 1892 have been furnished me by the Honorable William T. Harris, National Commissioner of Education. I wish to acknowledge here once for all the obligations which I am under to him and his predecessors and their reports, and to the Honorable F. B. Sanborn, formerly Secretary of the American Science Association, for these statistics, and for many suggestions gleaned from the society's journals; also Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, for many facts and suggestions concerning university settlements.
The same tendency is still more clearly shown by the following table of the percentage of college attendance to total population :
TABLE III.
Percentage of college attendance to total population.
54.969
i860 .00174
1870 .00129
1880.. .00120
1887 .00108
1888 .00125
1889 .00141
1890 .00164
1891 .00164
1892.. -00x75
31,443,321 49>i63
38,558,371 60.594
50,155.783 70.024
58,882,312
75.333 60,128,958
86,996 61,375,604 102,970 62,622,250
107.234 63,868,897 114,419
There was an actual decline in attendance upon the colleges from i860 to 1870, which may be accounted for by the effects of the- war, and of the more rigorous sifting of the enumeration in the later years. The tables show a sud- den and decided change in the proportion in 1888. The increase in college population instead of relatively falling behind that of the total population, sud- denly surpasses it, and continues so to do, in increasing proportion in 1889 and 1890.
This is the hopeful sign in the exhibit. Taking the generation together, therefore, we find it has been one of relative decline in college interests, but with a sharp revival of interest in the last five years.
Many reasons may be assigned for this change in 1888 and 1889. I think the general prosperity of the country has been an important factor. Another is that the years from 1882 to 1888 witnessed a decline in immigration.
But I see also another cause. The specific criticisms of the people upon the colleges, and their requests for studies of culture, science and art, as well as of discipline, were most cleady heard in the period from 1873 to 1883. At first these were simply ignored. But finally they were granted a hearing, were res- pectfully considered, and in part complied with. This recognition of the peo- ple's demand has borne its legitimate fruit in the signs of reviving interest in the last five years.
These facts were sufiicient proof of the tendency to decline and also of a revival. That the tendency exists and has been recognized by leading educa- tors is further evidenced by the following remarks of President Eliot on February i6th, 1888: (See Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 26, page 250: "Can School Prog'- rammes be Shortened and Enriched?"): "The anxiety with which men charged with the conduct of college education look at this question is increased by the relative decline of American Colleges and Universities as a whole. This rela- tive decline, which was pointed out nearly twenty years ago by President Barnard of Columbia College has been very visible of late years. The popula- tion of the United States is supposed by the best authorities to increase about one-third in every period often years. In the ten year period from 1875 to 1884 inclusive, the universities and colleges named in the tables published by the National Commissioner of Education show an increase in their number of students of 1 1 per cent instead of 33^3 per cent. If we select from the same tables the ten year period from 1876 to 1885, the increase is 16 per cent. But the explanation of this higher percentage of increase in that the total number of students in the year 1876 was abnormally low, being 2,400 less than in the year 1875. If we add to the institutions enumerated as universities and colleges all the schools of science and all the higher institutions for the education of women, we still find that the enlarged list of institutions has not gained students at the same rate at which the population has increased, although the schools of science have made very large gains in the decade referred to. Thus the increase in the number of students in the universities and colleges and schools of science and women's colleges, taken together, was only 23 per cent in the ten years from 1875 to 1884 inclusive.
Obviously there are serious hindrances affecting all the institutions which receive young men and women at the age of eighteen or nineteen to keep them under a liberal training for three or four years. One of these hindrances un- doubtedly is that these colleges held too long to a medieval curriculum ; but a greater hindrance in all probability is the burden imposed upon parents when
their elaborately educated sons cannot support themselves in their professions until they are twenty-seven or twenty eight years old. Hence the importance of the inquiry : ' Can School Programmes be Shortened and Enriched?' " He finds the principal trouble in the preparatory shools, that they do not require more of the boys from fourteen to sixteen who come to them ; that these boys are put to work on studies suitable for boys of from eight to ten years of age. He also urges the following necessities and criticisms of existing public and preparatory schools :
1. The need of better teachers.
2. The need of making the programmes more interesting, and of beginning literature, biography, elementary science and history at the bottom.
3. Diminishing the number of purely mechanical review lessons.
4. That children are held back to master what they come to in the courses, wrongly arranged, and promoted only annually ; — that is, the over-development of the class system, and the laying before the pupils of difficult reflective studies at too early an age, and then holding them upon the studies until they can be mastered.
5. The too great diminution of working school time by long vacations, frequent short vacations, the shortening of the hours of school, etc.
The report of the New York State Superintendent of Education for 1888 (Andrews. Draper) contains the following: "There is a large uneducated class in the State, and our statistics show that it is growing larger. The attendance upon the schools has not kept pace with the advance of population. Recent legislation forbids the employment of children under thirteen years of age in any manufacturing establishment, but no adequate provision is made for gathering them into schools. The number in the streets grows more rapidly than the number in the schools. Indeed, nothing practical has ever been done in this State in the way of compelling attendance upon the schools. The result is sadly apparent, and the premonitions are full of warning."
In 1889 the same official says (page 13 of the report): "The total attend- ance upon the schools when compared with the whole number of school age has grown less and less with strange uniformity."
The Census Bulletin No. 53 gives the statistics of thirty-five States in school population. Of these the gain in the school attendance was greater than that in population in seventeen States, and was less than that in population in eighteen States. Those in which the gain was less than that of the population are the more populous States which contain the great bulk of our people, namely, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, California, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming ; while the great gains were made in Arizona, Arkan- sas, North Dakota and other States where the educational advantages were insignificant before.
The meaning of these facts is that there is a decline of interest in public education as well as in higher education. I believe that still later, bulletin on all the States and Territories shows a larger number of States in which there has been an increase, and so raises the total percentage of school attendance to population. But the facts as a whole still disclose that there has been such a
decline, and that we need to be aroused from our complacent feeling that we are growing vitally in the education of mind and hand, as well as in numbers and wealth.
Since the facts prove that there has been such a decline, although now attended b}^ signs of a revival, it behooves us to enquire what has caused such a decline, and how it may be permanently cured. I believe that the tendency has been a part of a larger tendency, which pervades the history of the last twenty years.
Looking back over the last twenty years, I have asked myself what is the most important event or tendency in the history of education and of our countrj^ and of the world ? The answers seem to me to be all summed up in the tendency to centralization, to democratization, and, to use a stronger term, the socialistic tendency.
These tendencies have manifested themselves in every branch of history. Our census manifests it in the congregation of our people into large cities, and the comparative diminution of the population in the agricultural districts. Our business interests manifest it in the gradual absorption of all the leading industries by the corporations, and they in turn by their gradual consolidation into a few large corporations, and these again by the formation of trusts, and the gradual accumulation of the wealth of the country into the hands of the few.
Among the masses the tendency is equally marked. We find there the federation of numerous diverse labor organizations into a few national bodies. The popular demand for equality finds expression in legislation to abolish privileges, monopolies and abuses, and in Acts by the legislature declaring that various forms of property, various trades and various callings, are impressed with public uses ; and in yet other legislative Acts for the purpose of declaring what those public uses are, and regulating and enforcing them.
The centralizing, democratizing, socializing movement is not likely soon to spend its force. DeTocqueville has said that the progress of democracy is "the most constant, the most ancient and the most permanent fact of history." As a part of this tendency there has gone on the aggregation of the employees and employers into opposing camps.
Karl Marx, writing for an older community nearly fifty years ago, stated the view of the social democrats thus : " It is the sad side which produces the movement which makes history by engendering struggle. From day to day it becomes more clear that the conditions of production under which the capital- istic class exist are not of a homogeneous and simple character, but are two- sided, duplex, and that in the same proportion in which wealth is produced, poverty is produced also ; that in the same proportion in which there is develop- ment of the productive forces, there is also developed a force that begets repression ; that these conditions only generate middle class wealth by contin- ually destroying the wealth of individual members of that class, and by pro- ducing an ever-growing proletariat."
We are forced to admit the existence of such a tendency in America. Looking more closely we see that there has been in the past twenty years a
growing separation — a gulf between the people and the colleges ; that the col- leges tend to educate their pupils away from the people ; and on the other hand that the pursuits, the industries and the pleasures of the people tend to direct their energies and their interests away from the colleges and higher institutions of learning. The colleges and the people have in the past been drifting apart.
The country and the country academies have been the great feeders of the colleges in the past. But it is now known that the farm population is declin- ing in strength, and that the old-fashioned country academy has almost ceased to exist. The people are moving into the cities, and the academies have been supplanted by the city schools.
According to the census of 1880, 25 and 79-100 per cent of the people live in cities having four thousand inhabitants or more. In 1890 this percentage had increased to 32 and 21-100 per cent. If we include among the cities and towns, towns of one thousand inhabitants and more, in 1890 we find 41 and 69-100 per cent of the people living in cities and towns. (See Census Bulletin 165). " And the rest of them want to;" remarked a friend to whom I showed these statistics. Considering the suburbs of the large cities also, and the fact that the tendency has been now going on for nearly three years more, we may safely say that over one-half of the people of the United States now live in the cities and towns. It is also plain that the colleges are now drawing and must draw their students from the cities, and fit their graduates to live and work in the cities more than the past. In so doing they must take account of the cities special needs and tendencies.
With the depletion of the country, college attendance by farm boys and girls has fallen off, while the colleges have not yet thoroughly taken hold of the city life.
With the division of the people into two great bodies, the employers and the employees — the propertied and the non-propertied portions — it has come about that to a striking degree the uneducated people in the cities have massed themselves together in one mass, while the educated people have been con- verging themselves together in another mass. This is a part of the tendency which led the people and the colleges to drift apart. The laboring people have, in a measure, regarded the colleges as the institutions of the rich and the learned, and as not for themselves ; as belonging to the adverse body, to the hostile camp. As such the laboring people who had no part or lot in them for themselves sought none for their children. Many efforts to banish this im- pression have been met by the uneducated with distrust and suspicion. A University Extension class among the laborers in Chicago was looked upon askance by their leaders, and one remarked : ' ' There will be a prayer- meeting snap in it in less than two months." Fearing to be ensnared by the prayer-meeting snap, or some other device of his supposed foes, this laborer sternly resisted the blandishments of education. In this he expressed the atti- tude of the uneducated generally. On the other hand the laborers have been judged as if faialy represented by the noisest and most bigoted of their class- and their admitted ignorance has been thought to disqualify them from form
lO
ing judgments on educational matters; and their wishes and interests have been ignored.
Now, in so far as the tendency to centralization and democratization has contributed to this division of the people into hostile camps, it has been un- fortunate. I think that in itself it is neither good nor evil. It directly increases the opportunities and possibilities for both good and evil. It makes the work of the world easier, and the opportunity for every kind of work more abundant. It is easier for the good man to do good and for the evil man to do evil, in consequence of this drawing of the people together. The danger of the situation results from the aggregating together of great masses of social units in one community, who have no sense of common interest, who know no com- mon weal ; — into hostile camps who regard each other with distrust.
Another element in the situation is the well known attitude of the body of men who do the manufacturing and exchanging for the community, and of whom only part have had the benefits of a higher education — the busi- ness men. They still to an unfortunate degree regard the higher education either as something sentimental for which they have no use, or as something ornamental which they cannot use themselves, but which they wish for their families, and are willing to pay for in proportion to the degree in which it will prove an ornament.
II.
This being the situation, and the colleges being the sufferers thereby, what ought the colleges to do in self-protection? How can this tendency be checked ? How can the public interest in the colleges be revived ? How can the loss in the country be met, and how can the people of the cities be reached ?
Undoubtedly the first thing is to study properly the history and causes of this present tendency itself. In studying this we find ourselves studying the history and causes of all such movements, and learning their strength and their weakness. We must do this to overcome the present difficulties. More- over the difficulties which the colleges themselves feel are extended to their graduates. The same prejudice which works against the college, works against the college graduate ; and the college graduate needs to prepare himself by study of this movement to efface such prejudice, the same as the college itself. I am not now speaking of the college graduate for whom a place is already made in life, but of the college graduate who has to make his own place, and who belongs to the great majority.
The very education he has obtained has educated him away from the peo- ple with whom he has to work, and from whom he has to receive his daily bread, and upon whom his influence whether for good or bad is to be exerted.
This means that the colleges must not only study, but teach the history and causes of this movement and of similar movements, and discourage what is bad in it. This teaching must not be of mere generalities. It must be specific work in the field of sociology. This work must not be of merely abstract princi-
II
pies, but of experimental work as well. Such topics, for example, as the pro- vince of the government as a sanitary agent; the keeping and collection of vital' and social statistics ; poverty and sanitation ; natural and artificial pauperism ; the value of savings banks and building associations and benefit societies ; the treatment by the state of the dependent members of society ; the study of machinery and the factory system ; the study of the institutions making up the frame work of municipal governments ; the study of the special moral and intel- lectual needs of industrial communities ; an observance of all such organiza- tions and institutions as are within reach ; these illustrate what I mean.
Society has changed more in the last tw5 generations than it had for twenty generations before. A writer on railroads remarks that the world of to-day differs more from that of Napoleon than that of Napoleon did from that of Caesar. The railroad and steamship and electricity have revolutionized the world. They have not only annihilated distance, but they have introduced the migratory habit. They have not only brought Europe and Asia to our doors, but they have set our own people wandering to and fro in the country. Nine-tenths of the American people have changed their homes in the past ten years. Not one-tenth of the people retain the homestead of their childhood.
The destruction of the home-keeping habit has carried with it the destruc- tion of the powerful influences for stability and good morals which sprang from the attachment to the home and the restraints of the home. In proportion as the people move about the country from place to place they cease to have an abiding interest in and fixed attachment to the place where they live; they cease to feel the interests which make for the common weal ; they cease to become members of the commonwealth ; they cease to have regard for the res publica.
Said Rufus Choate in 1845 :
' 'Accustomed to encounter every day, at the polls, in the market, at the miscellaneous banquet of our Liberty, everywhere, crowds of persons whom we never saw before, strangers in the country, yet just as good citizens as ourselves; with a whole continent before us, or half a one to choose a home in ; teased and made peevish by all manner of small, local jealousies ; tormented by the stimu- lations of a revolutionary philanthropy ; enterprising, speculative, itinerant, improving, studious of change and pleased with novelty, beyond the general habit of desultory man ; it might almost seem to be growing to be our national humor to hold ourselves free at every instant, to be and do j ust what we please, go where we please, stay as long as we please and no longer ; and that the state itself were held to be no more than an encampment of tents on the great prairie, pitched at sundown, and struck to the sharp crack of the rifle next morning, instead of a structure stately and eternal, in which the generations may come, one after another, to the great gift of this social life. ' '
Our society has been unsettled during the last twenty years by a series of revolutionary forces. Among them we may notice :
(i) The invention of new machinery, suddenly throwing masses of men out of employment, and making other large numbers count simply as adjuncts of machines and no longer as thinking men, and members of the community ; and opening the paths of poverty and crime to those thus thrown out, and des- troying the individuality of those who are given the new machine employment :
12
(2) The sudden entry upon new political duties by untrained citizens, essaying stalesmanship, and also by those whose only training has been in the fields of traffic and private gain, and who carry these ideas and training and methods of promoting private gain into the council, into the legislature and into Congress :
(3) The migration of whole cities and nations seeking new homes in our midst, shaking ofi" the restrictions of their former homes, knowing and caring nothing for those in the new homes in which they are placed ; and by their example encouraging their neighbors of native or of some other kind of foreign origin to disregard the restraints of life, and meet on a common ground of a common disregard of all restraints :
(4) The stimulus to new thinking and the unsettling of all old ways of thinking and old accumulations of wisdom, leading men suddenly to disregard all history, the elimination of all restraints, and the forgetting that there are any such things as principles ; and by a recrudescence of civilization, seeking to begin the whole work of society anew :
(5) The recognition that the great property interests have been the recip- ients of numerous special privileges and franchises from the Government, which have been in part in the nature of delegations of governmental functions to the private parties and combinations upon whom they have been conferred : that such recipients of franchises conferring public governmental functions have naturally come to regard them as simply private property ; a growing conviction that while such grants of special privilege may have been necessar}^ and proper at the time and under the circumstances when they were granted, that the time has now come when the state should regulate such grants of public functions and see that the public services for which they were created are performed ; and that in time, without injury to existing rights, either of the grantees or of others, and in proportion as the State develops the capacity to do its own work and properly select its own servants, these public functions which have been temporarily granted out to private parties should be resumed and directly performed by the State.
This is going on in our midst. If the colleges seek to control this they must formulate their work specifically to meet these evils and changes. To meet the problems of new machinery and of the unemployed classes they must teach the practical applications of political economy. For the problems of city politics they must teach what the political institutions of the city are, and in what their proper work consists. To meet the dangers of a society rendered immoral by a shaking off of restraints on changing home they must furnish the leaders, the watchmen, the men who can learn the hold which fraternity has on all men. Against the bigotry of suddenly opinionated ignorance, they must furnish the teachers and members of society who have the mastery that comes from toleration and from a training in the use of scientific methods, whether applied to the forms of anatomy, of fossil life, to government and forms of social life, or to creeds and church institutions. It is by furnishing trained leaders who know the laws of political economy, the political and municipal institutions of
13
our cities and our government, the laws of right and wrong, and the history and experience through which they have been deduced, and the value of the lessons of the past in history, thought and religion ; and who by toleration, fraternal spirit, and a trained capacity to use the comparative method, the scientific method ;-^that the colleges will regain their leadership in the community. Against the dangers resulting from a confounding of public functions with pri- vate property, and from the attempt to wrench them violently apart, they must furnish men trained to recognize what public functions are, what private prop- erty is, how they are distinguished ; and how, in cases where they have become commingled, they can be gradually regulated and restored, each to its rightful province.
All this means that our colleges must teach sociolagy. This means that they are to take the study of life in society as the subject of scientific treatment, and apply to it the methods of science in every branch, using the exact obser- vation and comparative methods of science, the history and statistics of the subject matter, and fearless criticism of existing institutions. It is by these processes that the college men have been made leaders in the past. It is in fields where they use these methods that they still are in the lead. By applying them to social and industrial problems they will again obtain the lead. The difficulties of the study and the easy assumptions which we all make, that although the w^orld is ignorant, we at least know something about it, are well set forth by Prof. Sumner in the Princeton Review of a dozen years ago, (Vol. 8, N. vS., page 303); among others the obstacles interposed by the men who accept fixed and final dogmas from without about social living, by the gossiping novelists and the Utopians, and the whimsical sentimentalists, by the half-edu- cated men who, as he says, "may be relied on to attack a social question and hammer it dead in a few minutes by a couple of commonplaces and a sweeping a priori assumption." He named several of the difl&culties, but there are others also. These are the general indifference, the lethargy of the people who are in comfortable circumstances themselves, and who are absorbed and concentrated in their private business ; and secondly, the habit among those who are inter- ested in preserving the status quo of confusing Social science or sociology with socialism, and socialism with communism, and communism with anarchy, and students of social affairs with rebels.
To distinguish our science of sociology from all these dangerous tendencies, let us quote its dictionary definition. It is the science of social phenomena which investigates the laws regulating human society, the science which treats of the general structure of society, the laws, habits, development and progress of civilization, and all that relates to society; or to quote Prof. Sumner again, "It is the science of life in society ; it investigates the forces which come into action wherever human society exists. Its practical utility consists in deriving the rules of right social living from the facts and laws which prevail by nature in tlfe constitution and functions of society. ' '
14
A second measure by which the public interest and confidence in higher education can be revived, is by the addition of instruction in the useful arts.
The masses of the people are now engaged in various subordinate capaci. ties in carrying on the useful arts. Their lives are expended in them. For most of them the work done is simply a means of support. It has no educational quality. And, in tlie main, there has been no opportunity afforded to them for any education in this field except what they could pick up for themselves. There has been no alliance between the schools and the people in reference to the work in which the people are employed. A very few of superior talents and opportunities succeed in becoming foremen, emloyers, capitalists, invent- ors and leaders of men. The great mass do their work without recognition that it has in itself opportunities for advancement and for culture. And yet by teaching the elements of the useful arts in the colleges, these institutions will afresh convince the people that the colleges belong to them ; that there is no gulf between college work and their work ; that their work itself has in it the elements of culture and art ; that design and structure and decoration and serv- ice (involving in turn the application of ideality, of exact science, of practical utility, and of the principles of the fine arts) — are involved in every product of the useful arts.
The carpenter and the stone-mason have the highest respect for the man who knows the principles of architecture, who can design a building, who can determine the strength of materials, who can adapt the styles of decoration to the form of work and the nature of the materials used, who can determine in advance the cost of construction, and determine the range and proportion between decoration and structure ; and they have an eager desire to meet the man who can impart to them some of his knowledge on these subjects.
The people who inhabit the tenement houses have the highest respect for the men who understand the principles of sewerage, of ventilation, of healthful construction, and economic heating and lighting. They are no more ignorant of them, however, than is the average college graduate.
There are, roughly speaking, more than fifty thousand people in Chicago occupying offices in upper floors reached by elevators. Several times a day they use these elevators in going and coming from their offices. If an accident should happen to the elevator, and the one man in each building who knows how to regulate it and repair it should happen to be sick and away, in the great majority of instances there would be no one competent to take his place and set in order this indispensable piece of machinery ; and so we have the frequent spectacle of an elevator out of order, and vast armies of people climbing and descending many long flights of stairs without the capacity to help themselves to the easier means of conveyance. Again, if the machine is partly out of order, and ready at any moment without notice to plunge its cargo from the top of the building to the bottom and imperil many lives, there is almost none among them who has the eyes to see, or the knowledge to understand the danger, to know whether the danger exists, and what to do to avoid it.
Still more are they ignorant of the nature and laws of the mysterious agent which now carries all their messages and burdens — electricity.
The college graduate and the ignorant laborer meet on a common ground of ignorance in the presence of the unseen forces and dangers presented by the problems of construction of the great buildings and methods of transit of our large cities. How much better would it be if they meet upon the common ground of knowledge.
Is it right that while the work of the world is done by these forces, and our lives and our happiness are becoming more and more dependent upon the intelligent and scientific application of these forces to our needs, that the col- leges which draw men to themselves and keep them there for several years in order to impart to them a liberal education in the knowledge of the arts of the world, should teach them next to nothing about these multifarious useful arts by which they are surrounded, and upon the successful development of which the work of their lives will depend ?
Fifty-six years ago occurred the graduation of the first class that went through Oberlin College. Simultaneously with their graduation our great Emerson delivered his great address entitled ' ' The American Scholar. ' ' (Aug- ust 31st, 1837.) He spoke of the education of the scholar as coming from three great fields — from nature, from books and from action. He plainly emphasized that in our education there had been more of books than of nature or action, and the necessity for all three.
Not long afterwards there came the great Agassiz into American educa- tion, who taught that the great work of the scholar was to read God's thoughts after Him, to study nature as an open book. Such was the force of his illum- inating mind and commanding genius that in all our universities and colleges the study of natural science received a fresh impetus, and the establishment of special schools of science gave warning to the older institutions that they must expand their work into the fields of nature, or be displaced. Of recent years these studies have made most creditable advances in our own college. The development in this line has been rapid in many places, and slower in others; but swift or slow, the battle for the natural sciences has already been won.
There is no thinking man who denies the contention of Emerson and Agassiz, that nature was the scholar's field no less than books.
The field of action, upon which Emerson insisted, remains still the untried field in American colleges. You will see that the work in sociology and in useful arts both have the new phase of being expansions into this field of action.
Nearly twenty years ago, December 29th, 1874, our great preacher, Phillips Brooks, was called on to address the Massachusetts Teachers' Association. Taking for his theme the work of Milton as an educator, he said : "Milton's
ideas about education are really reducible to three great ideas, which may be thus named — naturalness, practicalness and nobleness. These are the three necessities of education which he is always trying to apply; and what has modern education done more than this?"
You will see at once that these three great ideas insisted on by Milton and brought forward and reinforced by Phillips Brooks, are the same as the three insisted on by Emerson and enforced by Agassiz. The naturalness of Milton's teaching was the nature in Emerson's. The nobleness in Milton's was the ideality drawn from the inspiration of books in Emerson's; and the practical- ness of Milton was the action of Emerson.
Emerson is easily our greatest thinker. He was himself also a practical educator. Phillips Brooks has been the greatest preacher of our generation. He w^as also an educated man and a practical educator. Agassiz has been our greatest American teacher.
Milton was, as Brooks quotes Professor Seeley, "the most cultivated man of his time, perhaps we might say the most cultivated man that ever lived in England." He was at once the most cultivated man of his time, the greatest of England's epic poets, a traveller, a cosmopolitan gentleman, a far-seeing statesman, an indomitable champion of the people, Eatin secretary to Oliver Cromwell, and what is especially to our purpose, in his later life he was a practical school-master, and earned his daily bread by the teaching of English boys.
When Emerson, and Phillips Brooks, and John Milton agree in telling us that naturalness, and practicalness and nobleness, are the leading ideas of edu- cation, that nature, books and action are men's teachers, what shall we say of a system of education which ignores any one of these three fundamentals ?
As Brooks shows us, Milton's tract on education was no mere hurried and amateur performance. It was a deliberate expression of the views of the first man of his time, upon the business of his later life. Moreover, it was no mere abstract generalization which Milton had in mind. He said :
* ' I deem it to be an old error of universities, not well recovered from the " scholastick grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts " most easie, and these be such as .are most obvious to the sence, they present " their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective ' ' abstractions of logick and metaphysicks. ' '
"I should not then be a persuader to them of studying much when, after " two or three years they have well laid their grouuds, but to ride out in com- ' ' panies with prudent and staid guides to all the quarters of the land, learning " and observing all places of strength, all commodities of building and of soil, ' ' for towns and tillage, harbours and ports of trade. These ways w^ould try " all their peculiar gifts of nature, and if there were any secret excellence " among them would fetch it out."
"I call therefore a compleat and generous education that which fits a man " to perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously, all the offices, both private " and publick, of peace and war."
"He would," says Brooks, " employ experts to teach the several arts" — " procure as oft as shall be needful the helpful experiences of hunters, " fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, gardeners, apothecaries, and in other sciences.
' ' architects, engineers, mariners, anatomists, who doubtless would be ready, ' ' some for reward and some without, to favor such a hopeful seminary. ' '
The man who insisted upon these practical useful arts as essentials of education was not indulging in abstractions when he insisted upon practicalness as a fundamental principle.
The same idea which animated Milton and Emerson, animated the fathers who laid the foundations of this school ; and upon her seal they wrote the motto "Learning and I^abor," because they believed that learning and labor should go together. They taught their boys to work, to build the buildings in which the college was housed, and to pursue the useful arts along with the humanities and philosophies. In the course of time the houses all were built, and the special elements in the situation which fostered the teaching of the useful arts passed away. It is the one departure from the foundation upon which Oberlin was built, that she did not continue to teach the useful arts. I have found that the Oberlin men of the early day were all of them believers and advocates of manual training for our schools, and the reason was that they were taught manual training themselves.
What do we mean by useful arts? Such arts as architecture, ship build- ing, engineering, and in that term including civil engineering, structural, mining, electric, sanitary, hydraulic, chemical and steam engineering, the mechanivSm and principles of machinery, mechanical and topographical draw- ings, industrial chemistry, economic geology and metallurgy, modelling, indus- trial drawing and designing. These are only illustrations of the useful arts.
Do you suggest that these are beyond the scope of the schools ? I reply that they are taught to-day in many of our best schools. Cornell, and Harvard, and Michigan, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and West Point teach most of these ; and most of these schools teach many more. They have set the example. These advanced schools whose prosperity suggests what we well may hope for, and whose methods we well may emulate, have all put in practice the great principles enunciated by Emerson and Agassiz, and Milton and Brooks.
And this leads me to a consideration of what we have done here, and to a comparison of the work of Oberlin with that of other representative schools.
Aside from the expansion in classics and mathematics, which has been great, especially in the latter, the work has increased in the past ten years on special lines as shown in the following table IV (see p. i8).
The actual total number of hours of instruction offered in all departments of the institution is as follows :
Oberlin College 1 1 ,065
Oberlin Academy 2, ycx)
Oberlin Theological Seminary 2,361
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, estimated on basis of terms of work
shown in catalogue, with two hours per week in each study 8,064
Total hours of instruction 24,190
i8
In modern languages and litera- tures
In natural sciences, In phil- osophy, In history and political science and sociology.
TABLE IV.
INCREASE IN SPECIAL LINES IN TEN YEARS.
1
I
)■ from 564 hours or 9.4 terms' work to 3,377 hours or 56.2 terms.
I
J
I 3
from 480 hours or 8 terms' work to 1,607 hours or 26.7 terms, from 270 hours or 4.5 terms' work to 1,184 bours or 19.6 terms.
-from 160 hours or 2.6 terms' work to 1,004 hours or 16.7 terms.
Total,
7,172 hours or 1 19.2 terras' or 13.2 years' work in 1892-93.
1474 hours, or
24.5 terms; or ^ ^^^
2.66 years work
in 1883. J
Remembering that in the old-time college year there were three terms and that three studies were pursued each term, nine terms of studies consti- tuted a year; it therefore follows that these branches filling 24}^ terms work for- merly constituted two and one-half years of the entire four years' work ; at the same rate it would require the unremitting work of a student for thir- teen years to cover the ground in these four great divisions now. The new electives in classics and mathematics, amount to three more years of work, added to the original four years, so that the student who beginning at the beginning would seek to cover the entire list of college studies in Oberlin, would now be occupied for more than twenty years. This is readily verified by dividing the total number of hours of lectures offered by the number of hours in a years' work, H^^^=2o}4 years.
A detailed statement of the work offered at Oberlin in each of the branches for the last five years is as follows :
|
. |
TABLE V. |
||||
|
88-89 |
89-90 |
90-91 |
91-92 |
92-93 |
|
|
Mathematics |
582 280 242 184 173 700 610 552 368 742 232 204 242 242 52 |
582 338 242 184 173 700 944 552 368 834 232 248 242 186 52 |
792 352 418 288 173 829 715 1154 887 547 329 278 238 184 52 |
739 250 304 549 251 662 728 1094 951 . 845 1184 299 583 209 110 |
1042 |
|
Physics and Astronomy Chemistry and Mineralogy Natural History |
250 337 1020 |
||||
|
Hebrew |
160 |
||||
|
Greek |
811 |
||||
|
Latin |
968 |
||||
|
French |
1092 |
||||
|
German |
948 |
||||
|
English |
1337 |
||||
|
Philosophy |
1184 |
||||
|
Bible.. . |
375 |
||||
|
Political Economy |
673 |
||||
|
History |
331 |
||||
|
Fine Arts |
116 |
||||
|
Useful Arts |
474 |
||||
19
This shows that our faculty have heard the demands of the people.
In the two following tables I have made a comparative exhibit of the work done in these branches in Harvard, Copnell and Michigan universities, and in Oberlin, Yale, Amherst, Vassar, Princeton, Williams and Dartmouth colleges, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
TABLE VI.
|
Colleges. |
Total Hours Class Work for Degree. |
Total Hours Prescribed Work. |
Remainder of Hours Open to Election. |
Total Elective Hours Offered. |
Total Elective and Prescribed |
|
Harvard |
1872 2161 2210 2340 2196 1982 2164 2128 2160 2208 2720 |
234 1121 300 1133 1062 844 1059 936 1569 1739 680 |
1638 1049 1910 1207 1134 1138 1105 1194 591 469 1840 |
24876 19930 20173 10932 7526 5462 4359 4176 3191 2877 18285 |
25138 |
|
Cornell |
21050 |
||||
|
IVTicliicran |
20473 |
||||
|
.Oberlin Yale Amherst |
11065 8588 6306 |
||||
|
Vassar |
5418 |
||||
|
Princeton. |
5112 |
||||
|
Williams |
4760 |
||||
|
Dartmouth |
4616 |
||||
|
Massachusetts Institute Tech . . |
18965 |
Table 6 presents a summary of the total amount of work done in each.
In the following table 7 I have condensed the studies in each school into the great heads of classics, mathematics, philosophy, and the group called history, political economy and sociology, modern languages, natural science, and the useful arts, as well as religious studies.
20
|
^ |
c! |
^ |
^ |
X |
^ |
^ |
n |
I |
||
|
a> |
> |
P |
(/)' |
P |
p |
|||||
|
o |
3 |
•-t |
° 1 |
B p |
^ |
|||||
|
l/i |
02 |
M |
3^ |
|||||||
|
ft' |
P |
W ^ |
o' |
c |
||||||
|
fi |
» |
ffQ |
Q |
rt |
||||||
|
P' |
9 |
si |
C3 |
i' |
||||||
|
rt> |
C/3 |
|||||||||
|
§ |
||||||||||
|
Required |
BO |
|||||||||
|
(0 |
K) |
^ |
OJ |
M |
so 4^ |
|||||
|
. |
i^ |
>4 |
•^i |
HH Cn |
0 Ck> |
Offered |
i-^ |
|||
|
00 |
DO |
VO |
Cn |
-. -i^ |
^ |
|||||
|
^ |
i' |
0^ |
O |
to |
(0 cn |
|||||
|
Required |
s 5 |
|||||||||
|
o\ |
0 |
C/i |
to |
M |
M |
o |
||||
|
. |
^ |
<! |
HH |
O Oi |
0 ^ |
Offered |
r- |
|||
|
» |
0 |
vD |
00 |
ON |
:) |
|||||
|
V. |
o |
0 |
4^ |
O Cn |
/J |
|||||
|
Required |
1 |
|||||||||
|
to |
On |
Oi |
HI |
i-l |
M |
to |
||||
|
C |
^ |
^ |
ON |
Cn |
M |
to |
M |
Offered |
||
|
s) |
^ |
Cn> |
4^ |
00 |
00 |
JN |
• |
|||
|
V |
O V |
O |
00 |
^ vO |
00 ^ |
|||||
|
V |
O |
to to |
HH HH to |
Required |
^ |
|||||
|
c |
A> |
to |
00 |
0 ^ |
« |
|||||
|
i_^ |
OA |
(_, |
)_, |
!_, |
1^ |
|||||
|
-4 |
8^ |
CO |
g |
00 |
w vo to OO |
Offered |
p |
|||
|
Cn |
1^ |
<l |
0 |
4^ 4^ OJ vo |
||||||
|
OA O |
^ |
to Cn 00 O |
Required |
|||||||
|
a^ |
to |
00 4^ |
CO |
|||||||
|
h-( |
to |
M |
||||||||
|
K) C |
>i c |
^ |
to |
vO vo vO |
ON |
Offered |
||||
|
00 |
a\ c |
>J |
00 |
Cn vo vO |
» |
|||||
|
4^ |
O |
K) |
OS |
to |
to |
O 4^ |
||||
|
to 00 |
ON |
4^ |
1— t 4^ |
to 00 |
Required |
1 |
||||
|
00 |
OJ |
4^ |
4^ |
00 |
||||||
|
HH |
M |
^ |
||||||||
|
)_i |
K) |
OJ |
4^ |
^ 4^ |
to |
Offered |
53- |
|||
|
-^ |
as |
00 |
O vo OJ |
to |
* |
|||||
|
-1^ |
to |
4^ |
vo |
to CO 4^ |
||||||
|
g: |
Cn |
to |
^ 4^ ON ON |
Required |
-ei |
|||||
|
ON |
4i. |
ON |
to |
00 |
M |
|||||
|
(^ |
,,^ |
HH |
pS |
|||||||
|
00 |
< |
-n |
4^ 4^ |
8 |
00 O 4^ |
Offered |
||||
|
00 |
to |
o |
O |
to 4^^ |
||||||
|
to hi |
"^I |
0 |
to |
to cn ^ 00 |
Required |
3 |
||||
|
ON |
to |
00 |
On |
ON 4^ |
s |
|||||
|
>-t |
>-^ |
M |
^ |
|||||||
|
< |
to to |
o ^ to vo |
00 to |
00 |
Offered |
fc3 |
||||
|
00 |
4^ |
ON |
to |
00 |
00 |
|||||
|
to |
to so |
to HH to OJ HH ^ OJ C/J |
Required |
:^ |
||||||
|
to |
H4 |
0 |
4^ |
o |
@ |
|||||
|
K> |
*-> |
4i^ OJ |
ON |
ON |
Offered |
|||||
|
C/J |
< |
^ |
VO |
vO ^J vo Oj |
||||||
|
M |
00 |
4^ |
HH |
ON |
ON |
|||||
|
KJ 8 |
-►J |
i^ |
-^ |
to |
Cn |
Required |
1 |
|||
|
O |
ON |
O Cn |
ON |
|||||||
|
8 |
C/A |
M O |
o |
to |
to On to VO |
•H |
Offered |
|||
|
0 |
-F^ |
^ |
to |
O |
-n |
to |
o |
21
By this you will see that Oberlin offers about half the amount of work done in each of the three universities, about two-thirds of the amount at the Institute of Technology, considerably more than that offered at Yale, and nearly twice that offered at Amherst, and more than twice the amount offered at either Vassar, Princeton, Williams or Dartmouth.
I may say here that if the amount of work done in the Oberlin schools of music and theology were added to the college work in determining the total, (as much of the work of the special schools of the universities is included in their totals) the total of work offered for Oberlin would be about equal in amount to that of Harvard, but I have confined these tables to the work of the college alone.
It appears from this table that in the amount of work offered Oberlin is in advance of the colleges in general, and behind the universities.
What are the 474 hours of useful arts taught at Oberlin? They are branches of the department of mathematics, known therein as courses 5A, 5B, II and 12, named engineering, mechanical drawing, force functions and analytic mechanics, and it requires some expansion of the term to coUvSider all of these as useful arts. If we should add to this list the three courses in physics, which are at once scientific, and relate to the useful arts, it would add 198 hours to the subject of equally useful arts, and deduct a similar amount from the heading of natural science. You will see that Harvard and Michigan offer more than five times as much and Cornell more than ten times as much instruction in the useful arts as is offered here.
I may remark here that the present catalogue shows that the whole num- ber of men in the institution is 683, while the whole number of women is 809, and that the disparity in the number of men and women thus indicated has existed for several years.
Mahy things may be said in explanation of this. Undoubtedly any one on the ground is more familiar with it than I, but I have this suggestion to offer, that the useful arts as they are practiced to-day* are preeminently the work of men, and that if a well balanced course of study in the useful arts were added to the curriculum, the prophecy is safe that it would increase the number of men attending to at least an equality with the women in two years. Moreover it would be only fair play to the men. The factor which accounts for plurality of attendance of women is the conservatory of music. A course in the useful arts will redress the balance.
A third method of connecting the colleges with the people is by college or university extension. The whole basis of this work rests on the proposition that the colleges are meant for the whole people. Relatively to the people who are of suitable age to enjoy them they are enjoyed by about five per cent of the people. Ought these vast educational plants to be enjoyed by only five per cent of the people, and the other ninety-five per cent to go without them ?
22
Plainly not. Some means must be found by which to confer upon the other ninety-five per cent some of the benefits of the higher education. If we cannot give them the whole we can give them part ; and, whatever may be said as a matter of permanent policy, certainly as a beginning, any part is better than none. If the people cannot come to the university, let us take the university to them. lyCt us make an extension of the benefits of the university to the people who are unable to attend the university itself. The partial collegiate course of two years now offered at Oberlin is itself a recognition of the need of such extension, and an offer of it on the home grounds.
The movement for university extension is itself the specific educational product of the twenty years under review. It was first begun in a simple way. in England, shortly prior to 1873, and it received the sanction of the University of Cambridge in that year. Almost at the same time, and independently thereof Dr. J. H. Vincent began his work at Chatauqua for university extension, though not calling it by that name. The English work resulted in the organi- zation of a special society at I^ondon, composed of learned and wealthy men for its support, in 1876. It received the support and participation of the University of Oxford in 1878. In this country the first work in the cities was planned at the Thousand Islands meeting of the American I^ibrary Association, in 1887. It was tried in Buffalo, in Canton, Ohio, in Philadelphia and St. lyouis, in the winter of 1887-88; and it received the indorsement of the University of the State of New York in 1889, followed by the appropriation of ten thousand dol- lars by the legislature of New York for the carrying of its work into effect as a part of the educational work of the State in 1890. Ford's News writes of it in 1886: "The idea is taking hold of conservative Scotland, and it has already been put in practice by the Universities of Australia. Many colleges have since enlisted in it in America."
The University of Chicago boldly announced in 1891 that this work would constitute an integral branch of the university's instruction, and it has been in successful operation in the cities and towns within its field ever since.
The work done in university extension consists of lectures by university professors to the people of the various cities and towns, in systematic courses upon the subjects of university instruction, with most of the accompaniments of university life except those of daily class room work and of residence at the university. Literature, history, the principles and history of the fine arts, political economy, sociology, the natural sciences, the useful arts, and the study of the classics as branches of history and literature, constitute the princi- pal subjects of instruction.
In England the work is carefully organized under the direction and support of a great university or college, its professors and some of its advanced students go to the several towns where the extension work is carried on, and deliver courses of lectures on their specialties. Ordinarily twelve lectures constitute a course. Elaborate printed outlines of the lect- ures, with abundant lists of suggestive references to books, magazine arti- cles, records of statistics, and (where appropriate) to the published decisions
23
of the courts, bearing on the subjects of the lectures, are placed in the hands of the extension class in advance. Discussions follow the lectures, then a time for private reading, followed by weekly hours of conference between the class and the professor; and the results of the study are covered by written reviews submitted by the members of the class. The town library becomes at once the center of the work, and a people's college. When the class have become suffi- ciently interested, the courses of study are grouped together and developed into a continuous program. Students who wish to enroll themselves for a continu- ous course, are designated by the university carrying on the work as "students affiiliated with the university, ' ' and certificates and diplomas are issued, and after a course covering several years and proper examinations, the successful student receives a special degree. The Cambridge society uses a double test. Certificates are granted to those who pass the examination only if the themes and written reports which they have submitted during the whole course have satisfied the lecturer. They are thus submitted to the double test of furnishing frequent satisfactory reviews and of passing satisfactory final examinations, testing both their sustained interest and their acquisition of knowledge.
This work did not come into existence without a demand. It is rather in direct response to the oft-expressed criticism upon the colleges, that they did nothing for the people; and in the work thus far done it has become plain that the demand exceeds the supply.
For the audiences in general it substituted thorough and systematic treat- ment of the subjects discussed, for the heterogeneous jumble of undirected read- ing, and the old fasioned lyceum lectures. There is in the university lectures a sustained interest about a particular subject, conducted by a qualified in- structor, continued for a sufficient length of time to enable the audience to aquire definite knowledge and clear views of their own. It is the imparting of real knowledge.
It is the beginning for many of the boys of their actual going to college and obtaining a thorough education.
For those who do not go to college it is the beginning of an intellectual life which they otherwise would never have obtained. To all of us it empha- sizes in a practical way what we all admit, namel}^ that education does not stop with the conclusion of a course ; that it should go on through life ; that the development of the man and the increase of his knowledge and his culture should go on forever; and it affi)rds a better opportunity for continued cultiva- tion than has heretofore been opened even to the college graduate. It brings the higher education into every field where there is an opportunity for it, with- out the expense of new institutions. It reinforces, and, to quote Ford' s News again, "it strengthens all local appliances for education, whether schools, col- leges, institutes, libraries, museums, art galleries, or literary societies ; it combines with everything and interferes with nothing. ' '
Says Professor Melvil Dewey, secretary of the University of the State of New York and State Librarian, (19th Critic, page 90), "Three conditions prophesy the success of university extension. i. The growing difficulty of
24
keeping students in college long enough to complete the desired course. 2. The steady tendency throughout the world to shorten the hours of labor, thus leaving a margin of leisure in the lives of the bread-winner. To fill this grow- ing time profitably and thus keep out mischief, is the gravest problem before the student of social science. University extension offers an ideal occupation for this new found leisure. 3. The willingness of the colleges to extend their facilities, and of the university extension students to receive their benefits."
Like all other work, it should be made as nearly self-supporting as possi- ble, and a suitable tuition fee should be charged. It will not be fully self- supporting any more than the colleges now are, but neither should it be gratuitous.
It will be exposed to all the difficulties of other educational enterprises ; it will have its spurious imitations ; and it will be liable to the tendency of exaggeration, and to that of calling things by large names, and to that of tak- ing short cuts, and of being misapprehended to be a royal road to knowledge. All these will be met, but, if handled wisely, avoided. It is scarcely more open to these than are the colleges themselves.
It may be said that this work must be small and reach but an insignificant fraction at best.
A local secretary of the university extension society of England says, (12th Natio7ial Review, page 231): "This work has been going on silently and quietly for the most part in many different centers of life and thought dur- ing the past sixteen years ; in the large manufacturing towns of the north, where the audiences have been chiefly workingmen, in the mining districts, in country towns, and in fashionable watering places; in all about 116,000 people have come under its influence, and of these 47,000 have gone up for the exam- inations which follow every course. ' '
Forty-seven thousand candidates for examination. That means nearly three thousand persons examined a year. A university with an attendance of three thousand students is not a small or insignificant fraction of our educational work. It is equivalent in numbers to two institutions of the size of Oberlin. I recognize that this means attendance for three months probably instead of nine, and that other reductions must be made in determining the total result.
If so much can be done in England under the auspices of its few universi- ties, what may we not hope for in America ?
Said John Morley : * ' What is the object of the movement? What do the promotors aim at? I take it that what they aim at is to bring the very best teaching that the country can afford, through the hands of the most compe- tent men, within the reach of every class of the community. Their object is to give to the many that sound systematic and methodical knowledge which has heretofore been the privilege of the few ; to diffuse the fertilizing waters of intellectual knowledge from their great and copious fountain-heads at the universities by a thousand irrigating channels over the length and breadth of our busy indomitable land."
25
Following the university extension is the ujiiversity settlement, of which Toynbee Hall in East London is the leader, and Hull House in Chicago the best type in America. A university settlement is the settlement or residence of a body of educators among the ignorant, for educational purposes. It is an effort of cultivated, philanthrophic people to impart and apply education by living among those who need education.
In the university settlement the same work that is done in university ex- tension classes is carried on, with the addition that chosen leaders of the work go and settle and make .their homes in the midst of the poor in the cities, and afford to them both the privileges of university extension and also the oppor- tunities for rational recreation, in so far as the bringing of those things into their midst can do it. In a settlement the work is begun on the side of enjoyment.
Laying before the people, first of all, the most refined kinds of enjoyment to which they are already accustomed, they make these the avenues to some- thing higher. It is simply the adoption in university work of St. Paul's excla- mation that he would become "all things to all men, if thereby he could save some."
I should not fail to say that in university extension classes and settlement work, the instruction in sociology to which I have already referred, is given especial prominence. The gathering together of people who are without edu- cation and who are themselves factors in the social phenomena of which we have spoken, affords the best possible field for experimental work in sociology. It is a laboratory for the study of the problems of city life.
Hull House, Chicago, is a settlement occupying the former residence of our benefactor, C. J. Hull, by whom our department of modern languages was endowed, and for whose daughter, a graduate of our classical course, Miss Fredrika Bremer Hull, the professorships in French and German were named. It is primarily a residence of women of cultivation who desire to share the life of the community and to have their neighbors share their privileges. It has been the meeting place of a workingmen's club, where the leaders of the workingmen themselves have presented their grievances and have been met in kindly spirit by college graduates, by successful business men, and by interesting society ladies, some of whom present the other side, and some of whom supply the omitted facts ; some of whom by their gracious presence, sympathy and appre- ciation, do more to convince the workingmen that they have a place in societ}^ than could be accomplished by years of argument. It stands on the West Side, at No. 335 South Halsted street, among several foreign colonies. To the east are 10,000 Italians; south, as many Germans; south-west, Polish and Russian Jews; further south, Bohemians; north, Irish; and north-west, Canadian French. This settlement includes the following branches : (i) college extension classes, (2) kindergarten, (3) workingmen's social science club, (4) young women's art club, (5) library (6) art gallery, (7) coffee house, (8) day nursery, (9) gymna- sium, (10) play ground, (11) young ladies' home, (12) college men's settlement, (13) free bathing house.
26
Add to these the Hull House Columbian Guards, who report on streets and alleys, the Hull House Municipal Order League and other organizations. For political work accomplished, witness the anti-sweating law, framed in Hull House and passed by the political influence of its surroundings.
The ' * sweating system " is a name given to a system of sub-contracting and sub-sub-contracting out various sub-divisions of large tasks of light manu- facturing; principally of clothing. The work is finally done by small sub- contractors with their families in their own homes, which are small tenement quarters, where the work is carried on at all hours of the day and night, in the same room with the cooking, sleeping, nursing of the sick, and all other family affairs. In this way the contracting manufacturer at the head avoids the cost of real estate and expense of maintaining factories ; and the clothing or other manufactured product is correspondingly cheapened ; but the germs of disease are frequently carried by clothing made in such surroundings to the homes of the purchasers. It was to cure this evil that the Illinois anti-sweating law was passed, forbidding the manufacture of clothing and certain other articles in tenements used as dwelling houses, forbidding child-labor, and limiting the hours of female contract labor on certain kinds of work.
The motives underlying the social university settlement are summed up by Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, thus: ''First, a realization that in demo- cratic America nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people ; that political democracy alone will not uplift the people ; that it is necessary to extend democratic equality beyond its political expression ; that the blessings of refinement must be made universal if they are to be permanent. A second line of motives is the impulse to share the race life and to bring as much as possible of social energy and the accumulation of civilization to those who have little; and the third springs from a certain renaissance of Christ- ianity, a movement toward its early humanitarian aspects."
You remember the work of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton in the Red Cross Society. Wherever there was war, they were present to pick up the wounded — to mitigate its horrors — to humanize its methods — to relieve its suffering.
To some this university settlement work is the Red Cross work of the industrial warfare. It is the work of humanizing and softening the rigors of the struggle for existence; and- this in itself is an ideal work of the highest order.
To others it seems as if this work takes a deeper hold of the situation ; — that it is nothing less than the primary force which is to reorganize the indus- trial army and give it the higher education as its objective ; that through it the masses will learn to use their powers as a whole under the leadership of universi-. ties : that we will learn to put away the fragmentary conceptions of the simply economic man, who is simply a wealth producing and distributing animal ; or the simply industrial man, who is simply a tool using aninjal ; or the simply political
27
man, who is the vote casting, office holding animal, and that instead of these we will study man as a unit. Our Emerson again has told us that what we want is not a tool user but a man ; "not a farmer but a man on a farm."
In political economy we have studied the economic, industrial man; in political science we have studied the vote casting, office holding man.
In sociology we will study man himself in all his qualities, with all his desires and springs of action, and in all his work.
Tyndall sat for years on the Grindelwald to see and learn the annual movement of glaciers. Our own Wright has gone to far off Alaska to see their operations in continental masses : our scientists are going to the ends of the earth to find the materials of exact knowledge of worms and insects : the church every year expends millions for the carrying on of remote foreign missions ; and yet here at home in the large cities of our own country we find at once the material for the highest and best work of science, viz., undisguised human nature, more worthy if possible of the most patient and exact and prolonged observation than all the materials of the lower sciences ; worthy the work of a Tyndall, an Agassiz or a Wright ; and strange to say, this same material is the material for the noblest of Christian missions. In these millions of city poor we often find the heathen at our door ; more accurately speaking, they are our suffering, wounded and dying neighbors, who fall in the industrial warfare, whose wounds we can bind up, and to whom we can carry the bread of life ; nay more, whom we must save if we would save our country, save our institu- tions and save ourselves. They make and share our environment and our poli- tical institutions. The benefits of higher education must permeate and elevate these masses, or else in time disappear. Now the university settlement is the scientific outpost from which we will observe and collect our facts for this scientific study of man. It is the laboratory where we will work out the prob- lems of city life.
It is the mission where we will teach the knowledge which is the word of life.
It is only by taking our education, our science, our universities, our gospel to the people that we will reach them. It is the best work that we have yet found.
Glancing back over the stream of time for twenty-two centuries or more (362 B. C.) you will recall the story of Mettus Curtius. The legend tells how a gulf suddenly appeared in the forum, which was riven by a thunderbolt. The aruspices declared that it could never be filled until what was dearest to Rome was thrown therein. After many fruitless attempts to fill it with their pos- sessions, Mettus came forward declaring that her citizens were the most valuable possession of the city, the dearest things to Rome, and armed and on horseback he leaped into the chasm, which forthwith closed over his head.
I have told of the gulf that separates the colleges from the people. It is only by casting in what is dearest and best in our education and our life that it can be filled. It is the colleges themselves, the higher education itself, the bright and eager young graduates, the strong young men, the beautiful and
2^
inspiring young women who are founding the college settlements in the midst of this gulf, that will fill it up and bring the people and the colleges together. As the fathers found nothing too fine or dear to impress and enlist in the old industrial war, the war against slavery, so there is nothing too fine or dear to be enlisted in the war against ignorance and selfishness, the industrial war of to-day.
I look forward to the time when there will be a college men's settlement in the heart of the manufacturing district of Chicago, where a man like our own Professor King, or a Commons or a Cross can preside ; where all these lessons that expand the heart and enlarge the mind can be taught to the boys too poor to come here, and to the people too old to come here ; where in turn the college boys who go to Chicago to make their way, and who have no home and few friends» can go and find a city of refuge and a home, can find a college boarding house and a college circle, can find a chapter of his college fraternity and literary society and club, and for the period of from three to five years of struggle, which they must undergo before they find their places, can meet the working- men face to face and study the industrial life of the city. And I shall expect in time a stream of young men who have had the first taste of education there to find the way back here and to other colleges and universities for higher work.
In time I believe that the wealthy men of the country, those who are not otherwise interested in education, will find that their work is better done by the men from the college settlement neighborhood ; that men of more in- dustry and less turbulence come from the settlement neighborhood ; that it is more profitable to support the settlement than to support garrisons of their property ; that they can fight disorder more successfully with schools than with bullets ; that they will help the settlement, will help the boys who wish to go from the settlement to the college, will found scholarships here for the settlement graduates who come here, and in time will help the college itself.
It seems to me that the work of the college settlement is the most practical Christianity ; that it is the work of human fellowship and service in which Christ lived and died.
You have the fruit of the tree of knowledge in your keeping ; and you have the ignorant multitudes about you. Give to them and share with them freely, for it is the tree of life as well, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.
|
RETURN TO: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 198 Main Stacks |
||
|
LOAN PERIOD 1 Home Use |
2 |
3 |
|
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS. Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. Books may be renewed by calling 642-3405. |
||
|
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW. |
||
|
APR 2 5 2009 |
i |
|
|
JAN 2 7 2007 |
||
|
' |
||
|
FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 50M 4-04 Berkeley, California 94720-6000 ' 1 |
,«i,Jif''<f'-E'^ LIBRARIES
CD3aM31S35