Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-09-20
COLLEGE OPENS
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IL 10 d ucDdJdDlS question WneIHeT d
college education enables one to make
more money or not. Some contend
that it does others urge that in com
mercial pursuits at least boy will be
better off who gets to work. at an ear
lier age. | shall not take sides in this
debate. | am almost minded to serve
notice on any student who has come
here because he thought it would pay in
dollars that | would like him to with
draw his registration and depart at
once. If thought that he could not be
converted to a higher motive, l would
do Just that. For | want different
spirit to prevail in this college. want
to establish the college motive on a
higher plane.
1t may fairly be expected as a result
of college training that young men and
women know how to study when they
come to college, but these gentlemen at
my side are aware that this is the case
only in exceptional instances. Alto
gether too many students do not even
know how to get a lesson. They lack
the capacity of mental grip and concen-
tration which fixes facts and principles
in mind and enables one to hold them
until they are called for.
A student will sometimes say that it
is difficult for him to remember. What
he means usually is that he does not
really learn. He can call to mind well
enough what is once fixed in his mind,
but his common practice is to pass over
the material of a lesson in a listless,
half lazy manner so that it makes no
lasting impression. If the will is sum-
moned, frequently the call is only gen.
eral one, to "get that lesson, or to
avoid failure next time: it is not the
awakening of his real manhood to the
worth and meaning of the subject in
which he is dealing, which brings his
vital power to bear upon the topic. The
motive is a selfish and unworthy one, to
get through subject, and it results in
failure to get much out of the subject.
Your work in the world will be like
the work of no other man that has lived
before you or that will come after you.
The great God never duplicates men,
nor their opportunities, nor their duties.
You may learn from many, you may re-
ceive suggestions from thousand, but
you must at last stand upon your own
feet in a place where no one has ever
been before you and work out your own
problem and achieve your own destiny.
1t is therefore necessary that you learn
method, the method of using the mind
in the problems of life, the method of
arriving at truth in the department of
knowledge which you will be called
upon to use. This and nothing less than
this, is what | mean by the phrase how
to study. 1t is a task for an entire
college course. Successfully pursued,
it justifies a four years course as pre-
paration for further professional study.
1t may be fairly expected as the
result of conscientious and sympathetic
attention to duty in college, and it alone
justifes the labor and the sacrifice
necessary for college education.
The problems of America are not less
difficult than the problems of Germany.
The need of men of mind in this new
world, with it's rapid present formula
ton of civilization destined to affect
profoundly the oncoming centuries, is
not less but greater than in the father
land of education. If we are to pro-
duce the men, we must raise the stand
ard. The world demands knowledge of
subjects and does not stop to ask
whether the topic has been presented
in class. If the college is to train men
for life in the world, it must make them
competent, not merely to reproduce
what has been given them, but to ac-
quire facts and principles in various
fields of knowledge, whether they have
been taught them or not, and to use
them as occasion may demand.
We want at Middlebury a college
which sends out men and women of
large obligation to the world. who will
assume large duties and who dare as
sumo no less because of their vision of
the meaning of humanity as it has been
wrought out by the worlds masters.
There must be Middlebury stamp as
unmistakable as the inscription on the
coinage of the nation. 1t must include
the spirit of bold attack, the courage
that despses no feeble instrument if it
be the best at hand, the resolution of
large achievement in whatever be ones
sphere of life. Our graduates not few
of the past ll3 years have given us the
right to claim this coinage. 1t is for us
in these perilous days of expansion to
see to it that we keep true. There
must be no lowering of the standard,
either in scholarship or in character,
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