Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1914-06-04

ton has changed our ways of think
ing, and evolution means recognizing
change as inevitable and desirable.
For the first time in philosophy, the
philosophy of change provides as part
of itself our right to change our philo-
sophy.- 1t agrees that we and all that
we do mark but a stage of growth, of
thinking, of freedom, of the pursuit
OF happiness. AS we have just seen.
We preserve of the old merely an old
dispute. Through it all women and
men have decided the real education
for themselves, regardless Of teach
ers, and 1t has consisted of freedom
to change. For it the world has
fought through ages against the de-
spotisms that resist all liberatfng re-
form-resistant traits Of human ma
ture necessary to prevent over-rapid
and hence destructive evolution. Thus
the last century has seen the maxi
mum Of educational change with the
omission .of classics, the growth of
science, and free choice of thoughts,
reading, teachers, companions and
life-work. -:4
This thing that men and " omen
have. fought for and bled for. and
worked out for themselves, this free
dom to change" as a partial defini-
tion of. education, freedom to live life
to the full, freedom to choose, free
dom controlled only by the five ethi.
cal essentials simplicity, good habits,
good Judgment, high thinking, service
of what does this new education
consist? For you will say, lofty SEN
timents do not reduce he thug to
precept, and after all there nllst he
books and mechanism wherewith
teachers may teach. What are the
details, applicable Ia the masses of
people, that make for educated happi-
nesse
To approach an answer, | must turn
aside from evolution for a few, min
utes to attempt definition Of the real
cleavage between American element
airy and professional training. 1t is
all confusedly based on the time-hon-
ored word college," you have it here,
the college of Hawaii" But the Col
lege of Hawaii is and ought to be a
technical school - yet the word
| arouses in old-fashioned folk a vision
VI CdhpuS, iSlSuI6Iy DldCk-SOdJSu
professors, youths under nineteen pur.
suing letters, mathematics and philo-
sophy, vying with each other in com.
petitive debate, whereby they become
| the elect of the land. A college
! graduate" in this dream is finished
! product twenty years old, of wide
learning and splendid literary style,
whose mellifuous tongue makes him
at once the central figure in any de-
bate where he is pitted against the
unfortunate "self-made man" Absurd
as this sounds, it expresses the Vic
torian conception of so-called higher
education. 1t was an aristocratic
monopoly.
| The American college, in fact, was
never this. Up to 1900, as at present.
the college was a professional school,
aristocratic to be sure for the gentle
manly professions were such-law
medicine, teaching and the ministry.
, And they were few. At the beginning
of this goth century honorable call.
ings were many, architecture, engi.
neering, natural science, public health
business administration, chemistry
industrial art, journalism, a dozen
forms OF agriculture and many sub
, divisions of the old professions. The
old college had become university