The humanities in the education of the future, and other addresses and papers

Preface

The addresses and papers that make up this volume have, with two or three exceptions appeared in print in various periodicals and publications, and are now brought together in this more permanent form partly in recognition of the occasions on which they were delivered, and partly because of the steady and even increasing public interest in the topics discussed. The addresses are educational, memorial, literary, postprandial, chapel talks, — glimpses of college life on its better side ; in fact the atmosphere throughout is that of the college, and in particular of the vigorous small college, to which we must still look for the most decisive and hopeful influences in education.

Contents

PAGE

I The Humanities in the Education op

THE Future 1

II The Value Of Discipline In Education

I bring words of hearty greeting to Franklin and Marshall College as one of the strongholds of sound liberal training — progressive certainly, with free and ready adjustment to new conditions, but in these adjustments, not yielding so much to the demand, e. g., for vocational studies as to thwart the main purposes of liberal training. Colleges that have done that are now finding that they must come back ; Franklin and Marshall need take no backward step.

We do not object to the word "practical" if it is used in its larger meanings, but to "commercialize" — if that term may be applied to our tendencies in education, we can hardly resist the impression of debasement, for in education we are dealing with the human spirit. "Standardize" is a good word, newly applied, and has an exact and scientific ring, but if it is intended to suggest to us an exact analogy between processes of education in a college and processes of manufacture in a mill, where your raw material is put in and

your finished product comes out; and if there is to be a strict commercial accounting of hours of study, of recitation, and of lecture, and an economic scrutiny of the use of floor space and all appliances, so that the ledger wiU show for every dollar of expenditure a dollar of return and a little more for profit, then that use of "standardization" win somewhat rasp our finer sensibilities — mainly because in education we are dealing with values which do not yield themselves to measurement on the scale of dollars.

I hope I do not caricature that very able and thoughtful document. Bulletin No. 5 of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education. I do not mean to misrepresent it; but the very terms in which the idea is expressed are such that the statement of the analogy sounds like caricature. Raw material, e. g., what is it in this "industry" of education but the members of the Freshman class? Should we so designate them in the serious language of science? The flippant Sophomore may so name them, and they must endure it I suppose; but they do so with a shrug of resentment even in that case. Then "finished product." Your graduating Senior, now becoming keenly aware that instead of being "finished" he is only ready to begin, will blush at the phrase and wonder whether it is science or satire.

In mere knowledge very likely we are on the lowest level of educational results, and even knowledge, while we can test the possessor of it by examinations, we cannot make any inventory of its value in terms of dollars.

Knowledge of course is important, but relatively the least important element of education.

"Knowledge is power" we say, but we know very well that it is not power unless under special conditions.

When it comes to that point where it utilizes the forces of nature, and masters the conditions of supplying the needs of life, we may call it power ; when in the processes of its handling there emerges some kind of capacity, then it is power ; when it reaches that point where it can be transmuted into character, then it is power ; but the mere knowledge of facts as a personal accomplishment is not power, and has in itself little value of any kind.

Now this passing of knowledge into something finer by means of reflection, experience, the familiar handling of knowledge under circumstances such that it will yield up its best fruits — this transmutation of mere knowledge into discernment, accuracy, judgment, prudence, wisdom — shrewdness, duplicity, knavery, etc., is what chiefly concerns us in education. We note differences here. To take a single contrast — wisdom — shrewdness. Wisdom — that lifts a man to larger outlook in life, ennobling his whole nature, qualifying him therefore to choose ends that may be pursued with safety and honor. Shrewdness — the keen edge of expediency to note advantages under given circumstances, with sharp outlook for the main chance, and that qualifies a man therefore to devise means to any end, however wisely or unwisely that end may have been chosen. Your shrewd man may pervert the good and play tricks with conscience and with motives. You cannot trust him to apply your preachments of righteousness and mercy. He will apply every precept so as to place the duty on the other man and the benefit upon himself. Incidentally here, it were well to have knowledge ripen toward wisdom rather than toward shrewdness.

Then there are processes in the getting and handling of knowledge that give practice in thinking and growth in that power. But here we are in regions where the advances of growth are not visible. If a man gain ten pounds avoirdupois, the scales will show that to the minutest fraction of an ounce, but there are no visible units of thought growth, or any tangible units in the texture of character, of whose increase one is immediately aware. A lad may pass an hour or two, under instruction, in learning how to adjust some delicate instrument, as a theodolite or a microscope; and may easily see in that manipulation his rapid advance in skill of eye and hand; but, in the knowledge and the exercises that give discipline of intelligence, and that deepen moral conviction, the results are such as not to be immediately obvious. The man with the scales can detect no difference. The man with the ledger will be puzzled to know how much credit to give, or whether he shall give any.

The student himself will be ten years in finding out what the study of Socrates in a certain class-room contributed to his moral fiber, and may be still longer in realizing the value to him, in the development of effective thinking, of his work in Trigonometry and in Cicero. After a long time he will begin to see it, and may go back at some commencement season and teU his Professor that such work was the most valuable part of his education, though at the time it seemed to him useless and irksome.

The education of the utilities has therefore popularly an enormous advantage over the education of culture because it presents practical and obvious values. Culture is the refinement of intelligence. It will not be overlooked by the careful educator, though it may easily be overlooked by throngs of students.

If then there be a great rush to vocational and utilitarian studies, on the part of those who might have and should have a broader training for their work, that does not prove the superior value of vocational studies ; it only suggests a possible lack of insight and mature judgment on the part of those who so choose.

These considerations throw a welcome light on the subject of free electives. That a boy may study what he pleases in coUege suggests a perilous extreme. Suppose it should please him to study nothing ! You may have noticed that logic has a quaint habit of playing tricks when thus pushed to extremes.

Peace! The world sighs for it, prays for it, groans under the horrors and the burdens of warfare. How then shall we have peace.? Why, build war ships so big, make cannon so mighty, projectiles so irresistible, make defensive armor so impenetrable, maintain armies in every nation so large and ready that war will be impossible !

If one bathe once a year, one is clean at long intervals ; once a week, one is clean much oftener ; every day, twice a day, clean all the time. Then the trick — if one is clean all the time why need one bathe at all?

Of the many reasons against free election, that against its principle and working should be sufficient — ^the liability to error in precocious specialization, subjects if left to the personal choice of students being so often selected upon grounds of superficial or even capricious interest. It is more important to know what a boy needs in education than what he likes, and what he needs is more likely to be thoroughly understood by those who have insight and experience and an enduring earnestness and sincerity in the work of education.

What he really needs is discipline of thought. Note two or three elementary stages of this discipline — very simply, without any garnishing of psychological or pedagogical technicalities — ^first to promote readiness of thought, ease and speed in its common movements. Not whimsical, involuntary thinking; that accomplishes so little. What we must have is consecutive thinking under the control of the will.

To hold in check the capricious impulses of thought — to keep it active and also to hold the currents of it in definite channels — this is one of the supreme values of school work, cultivating the power of attention, habits of study, accomplished by personal supervision, but also and mainly through class drill, making thought obedient to the call of questions.

A class, say, of fifteen pupils, plied with rapid questions for thirty minutes, a hundred questions within that time — perhaps twice that many, for they are easy, the easier the better, for the pur^ pose is not to test knowledge but to train thought; and the ideal situation is that every pupil will answer every question, not knowing who will be called upon to answer it aloud.

Second, promptness in certain processes of exact reasoning. This we get in the mathematics, from mental Arithmetic to the Calculus. Third, accuracy in the observation of simple facts — to let simple facts lie clear and true upon the mind as they may lie upon the eye. Fourth, coming to correct conclusions from facts. This involves not only clear perception of the facts, but also the recognition of their relations to each other.

This is reasoning, a valuable quality. Without it we make mistakes and are failures. Indeed life's failures come mainly from this source. Certainly there are other failures — moral failures, that strew the ways of life with wrecks that challenge our tears. Of these we do not now speak, but rather of our failure to do our common work. This comes from two sources — lack of force, which we often mistakenly call laziness, and lack of judgment.

Here we are distinctly within the realm of the practical. In this gift of judgment we touch th^ highest form of intellectual endowment. The man, who, in any given situation knows just what to do is the man of the hour. The man, who, in any difficult situation can instantly solve the situation by a stroke of insight that goes straight to its heart is the great man — in invention Edison, in finance Morgan, in war and state craft Julius Caesar.

These are eminent instances, but the quality of which we are speaking is universally valuable through all the grades of work — the maid in your kitchen wants it, your builder, your teamster — as much in his sphere as the president of your bank or the governor of your state, and the work is as fatally vitiated by its absence in the one case as in the other.

I am of course, well aware that the school cannot impart judgment; that at its foundation is mother wit, that fundamental stuff in men which we call natural ability. But the school can help in two ways : It opens to us a large fund of recorded experience. Eight or ten years of school life gives us some sort of access to the experience of three or four thousand years, and what we know about life, and how to do things comes to us largely in this way.

But chiefly, the school helps in the development of such natural gifts as we may have. Without development they will be of little use, so the school undertakes to guide and train us in judgment — by various methods doubtless and on various subjects, but I wish to emphasize the value of that training which comes from dealing with thoughts rather than with things.

Reason must grow upon its own product — that which expresses thought. In language we have the very implements of reason, and to learn its free use we must make ourselves masters of the processes of speech because these are the implements of reason.

We can hardly overestimate the value of language study in promoting growth in intelligence. Our earliest efforts in thinking are determined by the meanings which we gradually learn to attach to the words that we hear. We widen our thinking by getting new words and by going deeper into the significance of those we know. From first to last we are led on in pathways that are marked out by speech. In school or out of school we are drawing upon the wealth which has accumulated in speech. Our very words are charged with a kind of vitality — with the heart and thinking of the men who have used them. When a nation has been speaking and writing and printing a word for centuries, coloring it with the events of their public and personal life, expressing by it their temper, their courtesy, the results of their thinking, pouring into it their convictions and their passions — ^you can easily see what a delicate and marvelous instrument we may have in a common word, as Shakespeare or Milton or Webster or Lincoln may use it. It should be the purpose of educational training to bring us into the fullest possible control of this stored-up wealth.

So far on the side of facts, regarding words as facts.

Then the handling of the elements of speech in their relations is an exercise of great value in the development of intelligence. The elements of speech are the implements of reason, and the processes of speech are the methods of reason ; so it is the patient handling of these elements in their relations that develops reasoning power. It is by working upon sentences, getting their meaning, and exercises in their formation, that the crude insights of the untrained mind are brought forward to something like sagacity.

This seems so elementary that one hesitates to speak of it in such a presence as this ; yet in such a presence as this it is likely to be best understood that what most boys and girls need on entering college is the power to grasp clearly the meaning of a paragraph of classic text.

The relations of words in a clause, or of clauses to each other are not arbitrary or accidental, but are the essential relations of logic; so that in dealing with them day in and day out, through much of our school life, we get the habit of tracing relationship and the instinct of feeling it. This habit and this instinct lie at the foundations of reasoning power. These give readiness and ripeness to the mind liberally trained.

I have no occasion at present to insist upon the use of the ancient classics as the master materials of liberal training. Many do so insist, and under other circumstances I might have something to say in that direction; but let me here admit that, except for convenience, better appliances and immemorial habit in education, the ancient languages have no monopoly of disciplinary value over the modern ; but the best illustration of our present point will be found in a language that is at least foreign.

Note the progress of a boy in mastering a new sentence in Goethe or Cicero from the time when it is almost a blank to the time when its meaning is clear to him. He must give each word its proper meaning; must fit words to each other which are in the sentence remote ; must see differences between forms that look alike — often resting a decision upon a minute distinction.

The dictionary may give a dozen meanings for some word, and that will open new vistas of suggestion and probability into which he must boldly walk and weigh conflicting claims. He must constantly revise previous impressions in the light of fuller knowledge. The main purpose of all this, in the stage of which I am speaking, is disciplinary, viz, to cultivate those very activities of reason whose supreme value is put to the test in every emergency of life and work. I need not delay you to go through the steps in detail, but only to remind you that in every step of the process he has been grouping facts and forming judgments from their relations — in a crude and halting way of course, but he does better and better as he goes on. There is material here for processes that develop the finest judgment, just as in translation there is room for the best that the best can give — discernment, precision, delicacy of insight, felicity of phrase.

Unconscious growth in the interpreting intelligence is the fruit of this drill. It ripens through familiarity with linguistic essentials, but the real gain is in the keen insights of intelligence, in memory, readiness, accuracy, and in the breadth and alertness of mental action.

The time is too brief for me to dwell upon the valuable elements of training derived from the study of science. I had almost said equally valuable, but it is different. There is manipulation and experiment, and these make knowledge more definite and more permanent. There is training of the eye and hand as well as of the mind; and at times great use and culture of the imagination. Still we make little gain here in the growth of discriminating thought — in the development of the interpreting intelligence.

If we pass now from the quality of discipline to the quality of the truth acquired, we shall find that the claims of science cannot be passed over so lightly. Science opens to us the world of nature and we rise to the apprehension of it in proportion to our own powers of expanding thought.

The objects we study draw us on by all degrees of interest — on every hand the unknown and its challenge to the instinct of investigation, objects curious, useful, objects beautiful and wonderful. In mathematics not only, but in the study of types and laws and adaptations in nature, men seem to swing out into the inspiring task of tracing the very thoughts of God! How time is lengthened for us when we begin to realize the duration of geologic ages! How space deepens when we observe a star that presents no parallax in all the wide swing of our annual motion!

It would seem to fall in Avith such a course, if, so far as general education is concerned, students were brought forward rapidly to the results of scientific research, with only enough of the elementary manipulation and experiment to make these results intelligible. Some of the sciences should be represented in the required part of a Hberal course, not with exhaustive and technical study of detail, but with adequate introduction and then freedom to range among the educating ideas of science.

The specialist, of course, must go "further — for purposes of research, for teaching, and for the purposes of application to the utilities of life.

But I speak now for the majorities of average men, and insist upon the educational rather than the practical values of science. Fortunately the masses of men may avail themselves of these practical benefits without knowing much about the sciences, just as we may breathe the air without knowing of its constituent gases, or be nourished by our dinner without knowing anything about Dr. Wiley's analysis of the foods, or anything scientifically about the processes of nutrition. One man can build a bridge if he be a competent engineer, millions of men may cross it without being engineers at all.

Far otherwise is it with culture, with character, and the ideals of life. Every man must get these for himself or go without them. Elevating thoughts are of no use to us until they have passed into the processes of our own thinking. And so we enter the glorious realm of humane interests — the record of human achievement full of inspiration and power; the noble thoughts of great thinkers, living truths wrought out of human experience, and all shaped into beautiful expressions under the creative imagination of gifted men — the humanities, indeed, the inspiration and the nutriment of living souls.

To this inheritance our general courses should introduce students. We should lift them toward the level of these thinkers — not for selfish refinement, but for the symmetrical dvelopment of the whole mind and nature. Refinement indeed it is, but refinement of power, refinement of discrimination in matters of thought and judgment and taste, of faith and morals, of every interest which the student's larger life may compass.

in

PROFESSIONAL STUDY IN COLLEGE

The influence of ennobling study, not only to develop the capacity to do better work, but to promote a readiness to hear the higher calls of duty, suggests the question whether we are not, in our American colleges, in some danger of yielding up the liberal courses too far to the practical demands of special professional needs; and whether, therefore, we are not to be congratulated that so many institutions of high standing have been slow to yield to these demands.

Dr. Parkhurst, in a recent article on this subject, speaking of the criticism of liberal education, "prompted by the utilitarian spirit," says :

"It is a sad pity that our college authorities are to such a degree succumbing to this shallow skepticism, and that they are so largely allowing the idea that a college is an institution for thie comprehensive upbuilding of a man, to be replaced by the idea that it is a sort of whetting shop where dull steel can be ground to an edge, or a kind of cabinet shop where unshaped timber can be worked down and fitted to a particular niche in the business of life."

Lay broad and deep the foundations. We all

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recognize the need of that — foundations of intellectual capacity, of knowledge and of training; but the foundations are necessarily narrowed a little if the student begins early to trim off some studies and select others that have or seem to have a more direct bearing on what he proposes to do in the world.

There may be some compensation in a gain in fitness for special work; but the power to do specific things however well, forms the least important part of a professional man's career. For the right use even of his professional skiU, he requires knowledge, broad training and those elements of general intelligence and character, which qualify him to think well and act well under many circumstances where his special skill would be of little avail.

Besides, in narrowing the lines of preliminary study, we are throwing back upon academic years the conditions of practical life, and are in some danger of lowering our standards. In the region of the practical, men are always subject to a pressure forcing them down to the level of the motives of common business. We yield only too readily to that pressure, some more quickly and more completely than others, but on the whole in business the commercial motive determines the moral level.

The liberal courses of our colleges should give young men a stronger and a deeper hold upon wholesome moral convictions. What the world of business needs, so far as educated men are concerned, is, not that they cultivate earlier the aptitudes of competitive business, and thus earlier direct their energies into the channels of self-seeking; but that they come to their work, if later, then the better qualified to cherish true and strong ideals of manly living, and to impart a leaven of moral earnestness to the associations of later years.

We should keep the period of education as free as possible from any mere commercial influence, and as sensitive as possible to those elevating forces which come from noble estimates of life.

Such estimates we derive from the examples and thoughts of great and gifted men. They speak to us in literature. The masterpieces of literature are perennial fountains of inspiration in the essentials of manliness, and must be the master instruments of liberal education.

To such influences youth quickly responds. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says the poet, and that divine radiance still lingers about the growing boy ; but there comes a time when the blood cools, and the mature man sees the celestial glory "fade into the light of common day." And that is well so far as it is mere buoyancy of life; but so far as this spirit of youth results from the vividness of moral impressions, so far as his work is ideal in this — that it is to lie within the lines of certain great principles as integrity, fidelty to trust, self-sacrifice, so far as the glow that is put

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upon the future comes from a heart on fire with the inspiration of these principles, this spirit ought not to be quenched. Rather the man should be more earnest than the boy, his zeal and enthusiasm tempered with the strength of added years.

It is exactly here in one important respect that broad educational foundations have their supreme value, viz: in giving solidity and permanence to the convictions of youth ; and here, therefore, that the specializing process in collegiate study will surely be found to be short-sighted.

Perhaps the case would appear stronger if it could be said that even for money-making the broadly educated man has, in the long run, the advantage over the specialist ; and perhaps this might be truly said, but I prefer to take the higher ground that the obligations that are upon us to do good and true work do not rest upon the money-getting motive.

Eminence in professional life involves other elements of success than such as are measured on the scale of income. The educated man above all others should be the one to appreciate this fact and to know that while there are business aspects of work in any profession, they are of least importance in determining a man's rank and influence, whether in his professional work or in the many relations which he must sustain in the community, as citizen, brother, neighbor and friend.

The relief of suff'ering and the elevation of human life are ends which bring all workers to one common ground, whatever their several vocations ; and they are ends to secure which in any degree we must mainly depend upon those who work in the professions. Their success must, therefore, be measured on the scale of their service in these directions.

In journalism, if you were looking for the daily papers and the periodicals that do most to promote sound intelligence, and that exert the most wholesome influence on home life and public sentiment and public morals, you would hardly select those that are making the most money. The same is emphatically true of teaching and of preaching; it is true also of authorship. The best books and those that have done the most good are not the ones that have brought the largest financial returns. Nor is this less true surely in medicine and the law.

In short there is no element either of intelligence or of righteousness which a man may sacrifice for money-making and not subject himself to the criticism of having made a bad bargain, his own criticism: last of all and keenest of all.

It is true, a course of study in literature, philosophy, history, science and mathematics, may not in every case produce the results in intelligence and manhood which we are here contemplating, for there are shallow and selfish men among those who have passed through college courses as well as among those who have not ; but such studies

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faithfully pursued should promote and do ordinarily promote breadth of intelligence and depth of character. The atmosphere which such studies create should be favorable to wholesome and lasting convictions. The time so spent is by no means wasted, for these studies bring many rewards. The one which we are here chiefly considering, however, is that they furnish a remedy for that narrowness of thought and life, and that shallowness of professional purpose of which we see so many instances.

IV The Teaching Of The Classics

AEE WE SACRIFICING THE HUMANISTIC TO THE I.INGUISTIC ?

Some difficulty will be felt by those of us who are not thoroughly acquainted with the methods of pursuing the classics in use in the various institutions. Some indication as to the subjects upon which linguistic investigators are working may be derived from their publications in the Journal of Philology, the Classical Review, their pamphlets, and the papers they read in the Philological Association and other kindred societies. Judging from these, we get the impression that the aim of classical study is an exhaustive pursuit of certain minute and special lines of linguistic investigation. The field is full of busy searchers, intent and eager, turning over every old page and every monument of antiquity that contains even a fragment of a record of human speech, in the hope of finding some new piece of evidence on syntax, accent, or some phase of formal criticism. For such purposes, and with a view to the opportunities it may offer for original work, a text