The Washington herald., 1920-12-19
Leacock Outlines
Need Of Colleges
Canadian Professor Says
Student Requires Chance
to Deuelop

What is it that makes the -seIf-made MANI
What is it that educates the young man
who comes from college knowing, as is
generally conceded, very little! What is it
that produces men of real usefulness who
are not just dragged along by the rest or
who ride the stream of life in boats builded
by others?
The answer is duplex. 1t is internal
combustion and facility for absorption
OF combustible material to feed the mental
engine What comes from man must
first be born IN him, and then developed.
whether this is more. of good or bad de-
pends mainly on which gets the start of the
other in the development processes This,
too, depends largely on the outside supply
Tor absorption, in which direction this
, gives inspiration, even more than what
the engine itself depends. Some people
call this environment"
We are moved to this spillng of ,the COM
monplaee, if not trite, by reading Stephen
Leacock on "What the College Really
Needs" II may be no compliment to him,
but such as it is, it is. Mr.. .Leacock himself
has the supreme gift of being human. To
an unerring philosophy, he adds the flavor
OF humor all his own and a regardless
ness of the conventions in his method of
expression, which is equally unique when
attached to a recognized scholar and eco
nomic authority.
In fact he is as methodcally careless, or
as carelessly methodical in expressing his
mental products as he is in his daily habits.
Ha 1t
the rest of his business suit, as he is to for
get that he promised to send you a choice
mellon, as soon as he returned to Montreal.
That is both are to be expected.
Yet to be with him is education He in
variably gives the best he has, which it is
aajoy to receive, and if you have that which
is worth the giving, he is quite as certain
to take it. That is exactly what he says
the college needs. 1t is exactly what the
college to which the self-made man goes
furnishes him. 1t is the education in or out
of college, which men who are worth while,
who are of use get because they have the
born ability, or instinct or selective attrac-
ton which absorbs what is good and right,
true and valuable, while rejecting the op-
posite.
Mr.. Leacock being himself of McGill
University and so, maybe, hesitant of in
cluding the colleges of the United States,
says of the Canadian institutions what is
equally true on this side: "
They were, very largely, instituted
and organized with the idea that uni
versity was place where young men
were sent to absorb the contents of
books and to listen to lectures in the
classroom. The student was pictured
as a pallid creature, burning what was
called the midnight OIL" his wan face
bent over his desk.
1t you wanted to do something for
him you gave him book; if you
wanted to do something really large on
his behalf you gave him a whole bas-
ketful of them. If you wanted to go
still further and be a real benefactor to
the college at large, you endowed a
competitive scholarship and set two or
more pallid students working them
selves to death to get it.
We are beginning to see that the
textbook and the classroom are but a
part of the students life. If they are
taken by themselves, in undiluted doses,
they probably do more harm than good.
They not only injure the students
health but they impair his mind. True
fashion by shoveling in information.
The most that this can ever give is
erudition and pedantry, never capacity
and genuine requirement. The typical
product of it is the college pedant pos
sessed of a stomach full of fact but
with mind the size of peanut and
the outlook of child.
The real thing for the student is the
life and environment that surrounds
him. All that he really learns he
learns, in a sense, by the active opera
ton of his own intellect and not as the
passive recipient of lectures. And for
this active operation what he needs
most is the continued and intimate con-
taet with his fellows
If l were founding a university-and
/ say it with all the seriousness of
which am capable, would found first
a smoking room; then when 4 had a
little more money in hand would
found a dormitory; then after that, or
more properly with that, decent read
ing room and library. After that, if
l still had money over that I couldn't