The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1906-04-28
PRES. HADLEY AT VASSAR
Continued from First pareA

Slple culture therefrom, But is is be-
coming clear that the assumptions on
which the elective system was based
We're not so universally true as it's adj
Vocates supposed; and a third principle
is coming into the foreground to-day.
which makes our colleges places of pre-
liminary training for different profess
sions and callings in life-not culture,
put economy of time, being the watch
word of this third system. But in the
majority of cases this principle cannot
De said to have proved much more sue
cessful than the other two.
But If none of these ideals represents
the real purpose of our colleges, what
then is that purpose? If they are not
places for mental discipline or for gen.
eral culture of for technical training,
what are they? A good many people
frankly confess their inability to an
swer that question from the pedagogic-
al standpoint. They are content to ac-
cept schools and colleges as social in
stitutions where their children can
make desirable acquaintances, and be
kept as far as possible out Of mischief
until they get old enough and mature
enough to take their parents places in
the ranks of hard workers. But any
such negative view of school and col
lege life, which makes it period of
waiting rather than of work, is at best
an unsatisfactory and demoralizing one.
If we can have some positive principle
which will let us feel that we are NOV
ing In some definite direction instead
of waiting for something to turn up,
the chance of evil during the college
course will be greatly lessened and the
chance of good CORRESPONDENCE increas-
ed.
There is such a principle ready to our
hand if we will but use 1.-THE princi-
pie that our course in high school and
college is distinctively a preparation
for public service. The primary school
courses are largely intended to meet
private needs the technical school
courses almost exclusively so. The
work of the intermediate period, on the
other hand, exists rather for the sake
of public necessities than of private
ones.
What are some of these public ne
cessities?
In the first place. there is the need
for institutions which will maintain
high intellectual and moral standards
In the face of much that tends to
break those standards down. We need
places where science shall be studied
for the sake of the truth that there is
in it, and not for the sake of enabling
somebody to make money out of 1t. We
need places where the rightness or
wrongness of an idea counts for more
than the advantage or disadvantage of
preaching 1t. We need places where
history shall be so studied that mems
minds will be fixed on the things which
are of permanent value to the nations,
instead of those which are Of temporary
value to the Individual The aim of the
school administrator should not be to
teach certain quantity of another to
meet a supposed special demand. 1t
course that with the money and mate
rial at command he may give to his
pupils the maximum of this spirit of
devotion to truth and subordination Of
nrivate interest to the public interest,
If we start from the idea of pub
lie service as a central one, much
which now seems chaotic in our higher
education is found to have an intelli
gible and consistent purpose and in
the light Of that purpose some Of those
things which have seemed anomalous,
some which have seemed trivial, some
which have seemed unnecessary, are
found to have grown up and maintain
ed themselves in our colleges because
our instructive understanding of what
we, were here for was better than the
principles which our educational guides
have been able to formulate. Not the
curriculum only, but the various social
amusement, and social institutions
which form so large a part of the So
cial life of the present day viii be
found to have grown out of an instinc-
tive effort toward training in public
spirit, and to be justified by their eff
feet upon their members in the en-
phasls of larger ideals and views of
life as against smaller ones.
ALI the activities of the college course
outside Of the class room as well as in
6AQ6 IT, plONluCN LilOy pLOulOl6 LHlS
tdealism and public service which we
seek, are really part Of the college
and an essential part of it. BY recog-
mixing this fact we shall unite toward a
common and many differtnt parts of
our college life which to-day are al
ways separate and sometimes antago-
nistic in their claims. We shall made
the staudent see that no really valu-
able knowledge can be learned from
books without the corresponding knowl-
edge of life as it goes on about us. We
shall make the society leaders who pre-
fer to take their teachings from life In
stead of from books feel that their
knowledge of transient experiences
needs to be supplemented and steadied
by the understanding of the records of
the past and the principles lai down for
the future. Instead of two separate
groups. one of which regards society as
a distraction and the other which re-
CARDS book learning as a somewhat
burdensome routine, we shall have one
single body so animated by public pur-
pose that 1t will omit from its views
neither the shifting scenes of the mo-
ment nor the fixed record of what has
gone before.