The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-17
WESTERN COLLEGE VIEWS
CRITICISES TRADITIONS
Oregon Paper Takes Excep- tions to Pres. Had
 ley's Idea.

ley's Idea.
 II is to be regretted that our youth do not practice more the excellent Eu- ropean custom of going from one uni- versity to another, culling from each what is best suited to their life pur- pose. A year or two in the state uni versity at home, followed by a year at Harvard and one at Johns Hopkins or Cornell, would impart a rounded ac- quaintance with what is best in all of them and neutrallze the narrowness which is found in each. It is well on other grounds also for youth from dis tant corners of the country to mingle in the same colleges, no matter whether they are situated in the east or in Call ifornia. The more we know of each other the more homogeneous we be- come, the better we understand the wants of other sections than our own. tho more sympathetic we grow with our remote fellow-citizens. Just as the common schools cement the inhab- ltants of single city into a united civ- ic body, so these great national col- leses help along the enormous task of assllnilating the diverse strains of our citizenship. For example, nobody who knows the elementary facts of Ameri- can sociology thinks of calling us an Anglo-Saxon people any longer We nover were AngloSaxon except in q loose sense, but aA present the British stock includes aE decided minority of the American people and the birth rate shows that it is not holding it's own in competition with the Celtic and South European stocks. Acquaintance with such facts as these diminishes arid conceit and makes one more practical citizen. There is no better place to learn them than in d cosmo- politan university.
 The danger is that ones sympathies may widen until they become too thin to be perceptibe One who cares equally for everything cares little for anything. Between the hateful mar roWness of provineialism and the in effective breadth of cosmopoitanism there is a happy medium. and to at tain it is one of the genuine triumphs of education Perhaps, after all, it is acquired as often in the poverty-strick- esl colleges of the west as in the sump- tuously endowed colleges of the east; and perhaps again it is learned from the struggle of actual life more often than in either of them. Moreover, there are colleges in the west as richly endowed as Yale or Harvard; but MT. Hadley makes a point against them when he says that their degrees are of inferior prestige. That this Is true no- body can deny. Hanging round the degrees of Yale there is an aristocratic aroma which Chicago cannot impart. But, on the other hand, this aroma is purely social. It is quite devoid of practical or business value. No col lege degree is of the slightest conse- quenee from the standpoint of man who has work to do in the world. The great employers of the country eagerly snap up students at the technical schools, without waiting for them to graduate It is said that the facul- ties of the Carnegie institute and the scientific department of Cornell find it difficult to hold their men after the end of the junior year, so urgent is the demand for them in the work of the world. But there is no such trouble at the literary colleges. Their graduates are as far from fitness for any genuine work as they were when they enter cd Undeniably they have gained something, but it is not the power to do what the world cares for.
 Their gain is in the realm of the or- namental. It is a sublimated species of the education which young women get in fashionable boarding schools. The Greek and Latin of the colleges corresponds to the French and Italian of the female semlnaries. It is no more thorough and less useful. The literature and oratory of the young men size up very well with the piano and compositions of the young women. In fact, it is somewhat of a boast among the conservative colleges that their education smacks of an arsto- cratic yagueness and leads to no soil- ing of the hands or sweat of the brain. As for MT. Hadley's traditions" {" there is doubt whether a youth is not better off without them. These tradi- tions look to the past and vastly over value it. They shy at the future where every life must run and nestle in sterile antiquity. Our older col leges prepare us for citizenship in the Middle Ages they famliarize us with the municipal problems of Rome and Athens; but we are doomed, however rnhappily, to live in the 2Oth century, and the municipal problems that we must solve arise in New York and Portland Blind devotedness to the past has played calamitous part in American civic history, and the col- leges are much to blame for it. It has held us paralyzed while the bonds of the social order have become fearfully loosened One may well believe that 1t is to the state universities of the west, where tradition is weak and there the bold forecast of democracy prevails that we must look for the higher edu- cation that fits the youth for his time Portland Oregonian