The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-09-07
New Duties Of Higher
I Education for New World
It's Needs Demand Educational Policy Wisely Con-
sidered and Vigorously Administered Uni
versity Should Be Centre of Patriotic Propaganda.
HIBBEs. Princeton unver.t,.


Of the great war is one Of
bewildering completely. The old life,
which now seems so far away, was
relatively simple in circumstances
and condition. To-day everything is
raised to a higher power, and meal
culably confused by cross relations
never before imagined. National is
sues are thrown upon an international
background, private affairs take on a
public significance and the individual
becomes involved with the mass and
the mass with the individual. To
know the full significance of any one
thing, 1t is necessary to have knowl-
edge of many things. Competition is
more strenuous; speed Is continuously
accelerated; the opportunity is gone
while we are preparing to consider 1t;
the solution which seems satisfactory
to-day is antiquated tomorrow; and
the incessant play of the centrifugal
forces of life tend constantly to throw
N out of our regular orbit into
chance courses, where we easily lose
our reckoning.
The education of the coming gen.
Grafton therefore must be of such
nature that 1t will prepare the youth
Of our land to meet most adequately
and satisfactorily the conditions of
this new and feverish world. Our
young men and women must be given
q mind alert, vigorous, resourceful, a
rasolute will and stable character,
30 that they may not merely exist but
live, not merely survive in the strug-
gle. but overcome. The education of
to-day must put one In possession of
all his powers. He must be so gener-
ously trained that he will be able to
touch life on its many sides. What
ever his earlier school discipline may
be, am sure that the one who pushes
forward to a university experience
should be put in the way, of receiving
the maximum of the mental vigor
along the lines of broad far seeing
and far reaching educational policy.
Advanced training must naturally be
conceived in the light of the advanced
activities which one, fortunate enough
to have a university career, should
exercise In his after life in the world.
/ have in mind In this regard the
type Of man the world needs to-day.
That type should determine the ma
ture Of the university product, and
the product which we decide Is the
most desirable will determine the edu-
cational policy. The kind of man
needed to-day in our confused and
darkened world Is the man of free
spirit, one whose mind is not under
bondage, so that, either in the routine
Of his labors or in the crisis of an
emergency he viii never find himself
beating against the impossible bar
riers of his own limitations.
I feel that the prejudice against the
so-called liberal education is due
wholly to the fact that the phrase
liberal education" is regarded by
many unthinking persons as signify
ing something quite different from its
real meaning. A liberal education
means simply this-the education
which frees a mans mind from all
possible charlottesville limitations of
ignorance, Of prejudice, Of supersti-
ton, of false reasoning, of reliance
upon improved premises or hasty con-
illusions, Of superficial observation and
rash judgment, and above all, freedom
from the limitations of an arrested
mental development which dooms a
man to the dead level Of mediocrity
combining him permanently to the deep
worn rut of routine, while about his
little world hangs an inevitably clos
ing horizon. This Is the hopeless slav-
cry of the mind. A liberal education
10 the emancipation proclamation that
breaks the letters and sends one forth
TO his career and destiny a free map
In world which discovers its secrets
and bestows its rewards only TO him
whose spirit brooks no barriers.
For this reason I do not believe in
any exclusively vocational training
that is not based upon some founda-
ton of a liberal discipline. To ac-
Gsire the art of only doing one thing,
although of doing it supremely well,
still leaves the mind enslaved. 1t is
not free, free to develop and progress,
free to devise new purposes, new meth
eds, or new adaptations, free to ex-
plore now fields, and to relate the par
ticular tasks to other activities and
other pursuits, and thus make the
whole world of knowledge tributary
70 the special field Of daily duty and
occupation. Life cannot be represented
By a single line, hCwever straight and
direct that line may be. Life is tridi-
nnensional; 1t should have breadth and
depth as well as length. There is a
logical order to be followed in the
processes Of education; first free the
spirit, then guide the student into the
fields of his special studies, whether
professional, technical, or those lead
ing to the pursuits Of a scholars life.
II. however, one begins to concentrate
narrowly upon his specially before he
attains through wider exploration and
exacting discipline the freedom of the
SDirit. ne labOrs throughout his work