The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1910-09-28

be hoped that by what is here spoken
and done during the coming days the
state will feel that the sacrifices It
has made and is making for the
cause Of higher education are abun-
dainty worth while. and that more
fully than ever hitherto 1t will be
made to realize what it means to
commonwealth to have in its midst a
university.
Educational Crisis
Such realization universally is
today more than ever before impera-
tive. He is very blind indeed to the
educational situation in this country
in general who does not realize that
educationally we are face to face with
crisis. Unless public opinion shall
become better enlightened as to the
true mission of the school higher and
lower, there is educational disaster
ahead. Put money in thy purse!"
cynically counsels Iago. Shakes
peare's moral nihilist. Commercial
ize education, make every study JUS
utility strive for efficiency and knack
instead of character and culture vo-
cationalize the school throughout
such is today the program of 90
called reform urged by what would
call the lago school Of educational
rounded by such cloud of electives
In running the educational race, it
might be asked what more is want
ed. The demand, however. is not
for the industrial as merely legiti-
mate part of the whole, but as the
dominant educational note.
l have spoken of this Inauguration
as being call to the state to know
more thoroughly her own selfhood, a
call to introspection. as it were. by
contemplating these her institutions
of learning. which are the embodi-
ment of her very soul. The state
ment was not little trumpery emo
ton for the occasion, but expressed
most sober and earnest conviction
Munsterberg, perhaps the most pro-
found thinker in America today, has
said: II see in the college the most
characteristic expression of the
American genius, the most important
condition for the healthy development
of the national life. The college is
the soul of the American nation. 1t
was my growing acquaintance with
the college life that gave me ever
new inspiration to tell my country
men the story of American idealism."
These are weighty words from
weighty authority and they become
the more significant when it is realiz-
ed that the demand for education in
dustrialized, vocationalized and pro-
fessionalized, such as is now being
made, means implicitly, at least,
demand to have the American COL
lege RELOCATED to the background or
completely abolished-uprooted, in
fact. and cast into the fire like
dead tree which is only an encum-
brance to the ground.
1t would be arrant folly to deny
that great progress has been made
educationally during the last three or
four decades. If as President Jor-
dan affirms, the essence of the new
education is constructive individu-
alism," which interpreted means the
giving TO each man that training
which will make man of him." We
seem to he on the right track at least
theoretically, whatever our practice.
Why deny since gifts are so various,
studies must likewise be equally va
rious. and that the old curriculum of
ancient classics, mathematics and
philosophy, was utterly Inadequate?
To read Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats,
is to watch the spiritual sunrise of
the nineteenth century. But even in
the JOY of interpreting that phenome-
non to a class l have felt that those
were present who did not see and
that their time was being spent to lit
tie or no profit. Under the roof of
blue 1onian weather." how few of
those who study Greek ever come to
live!
The Right of Many
With the modern shaping of
courses with view of meeting the
demands of multitudinous mental ap-
titudes. who can help being in hearty
sympathy! 1t simply means that
education has been democratized.
Education is not privilege of the
few 1t Is the right of the many. That
stagnant formal education of less than
a century ago has become mobile and
fluid as modern life is mobile and
fluid. For consider in the midst of
what an extraordinary flux of change
we are living. Not the spirit, which
declared: Il am the same yesterday.
today and forever" but rather that
which affirmed Of itself: Behold, /
make all things new" seems to be
working in modern life. Two decades
of time are now sufficient to shift all
the scenery in the great miracle play
In which we are actors. The next
generation will no more duplicate
our manner of life than have we du-
plicated that Of our fathers. This
teeming changing life has surged in
Upon and flooded the university. ar
t:culating Its life with the larger
life Of the whole. That new prob
lens have arisen. that the adjust
ment to the new order of things is
still partial. that unforeseen evils
have resulted in the course of these
changes. does not alter the essential
fact that progress has been made and
that education has gained immeasur-
ably.
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