CAP. PRIS. CAP. PRI. AN. CAPTAIN PRISONER Behold, my lords, assembled here at ease, And straight hoist sail for Troy. Speak, is it true? And Agamemnon leads? Give Command to keep this prisoner, and to tend Is something else than prophecies or dreams I observe That this is needful. Yet I find the words UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATION AND TRAINING* ANDREW C. LAWSON We pride ourselves that this is an age of progress. Inventions and devices that our fathers never dreamed of have changed to a remarkable degree the environment and the course of our daily life. A thousand special machines have superseded the old-fashioned, general, Jack-of-alltrades machine, the human body, in almost all those operations which make for the sustenance, the comfort and the convenience of civilized man in his many modes of life. These machines have so reduced the amount of bodily effort necessary for existence and have made possible such a distribution of effort, that great quantities of human energy have been released for that astonishing activity which we call the pursuit of happiness; for man is a hunter, and happiness, real or imaginary, is the game that he stalks with a passion at once relentless and pathetic. It is this growth of opportunity for the pursuit of happiness not less than the increase in the rapidity of our mechanistic operations and in the ease of our communications, which characterizes our age as one of progress. The pursuit of happiness has many manifestations, but the most interesting from my present point of view is that which is actuated by the belief that happiness is to be won * A paper read before the Cosmos Club, University of California. through knowledge and the cultivation of the intelligence. So prevalent is this belief that civilized peoples have developed vast educational institutions, to enable their youths to acquire and appreciate knowledge, and to provide for the increase of knowledge. Schools, colleges and universities abound in all civilized communities, and their development is essentially a very modern phenomenon, the one which perhaps most completely epitomizes the aim and hope of our civilization. The education of the young has of course been the concern of an enlightened few in past ages, but as an institutional development on an extensive social scale it is a peculiar feature of the modern world. As an institution its growth has been rapid and it is still plastic. As we see it in our midst it is an institution in the making, unadjusted to its purposes and but partially responsive to the demands which have brought it into being. The motives which impel resort to education as a means of amelioration of the conditions of life, both individual and collective, are ill defined and mixed. The prevailing notion is that knowledge is to be acquired and the intelligence improved for the purpose of applying knowledge and intelligence to the pursuit of happiness of some other kind than that which inheres in knowledge and intelligence per se. For example, the average young man of our day seeks education not for the satisfaction which it brings, but in order that he may more efficiently outstrip his fellows in the general struggle for livelihood, wealth, power, fame, etc., which are supposed to be far more conducive to happiness than the conceit of intellectual achievement. For the vast majority of people knowledge is only a means to an end in the pursuit of happiness, merely the weapon of the hunter wherewith he brings down the quarry. For only a very small minority does the acquisition of knowledge and the application of the mind to the problems of the universe become the chief joy of life. With this unequal distribution of the notion of what is most conducive to happiness I have no quarrel. It seems natural and inevitable. It is to be noted, however, that although the motives which underlie the effort to acquire knowledge and train the intelligence may be of that order which we term mercenary, the result of the effort comprises more than efficiency for mercenary purposes. In addition to the useful knowledge and the more useful training of the intelligence, which most students are chiefly concerned in acquiring, there is a bonus of satisfaction which comes from wider outlook, a quality of mind developed which in some measure transcends the mercenary, and an attitude toward life engendered which is beneficial both to the individual and to the society of which he is a member. It is this bonus of culture, the wider view of life and of the universe, the partial suppression of man's inherent and inherited superstition, the ability to evaluate, to coöperate and to prefer the better to the worse, which is the justification of education as a state supported institution. I can imagine no good reason for education at the public expense if it were only to satisfy the obvious desire of the individual to become more successful in competition with his fellows who are less appreciative of the usefulness of knowledge and trained intelligence, or who, if appreciative, are denied by circumstances full participation in the advantages of the institution. It is the by-product of education for mercenary purposes that makes it pay from a social point of view. In my earlier years as a teacher it used to distress me to note the almost wholly mercenary purpose of students who came to the University for engineering training. I have since discovered that the motive is not peculiar to engineering students, but is even more strongly apparent in the much larger class of students who come to the University to qualify as teachers, and is by no means difficult to observe in the Graduate Division. The motive of the students no longer troubles me, and I have come to recognize that, from the student's point of view, the University exists for the purpose of enabling them individually to secure a larger share of the good things of life, in a material sense, than their less alert brothers and sisters of our social family. I have also discovered, however, fortunately for my own peace of mind, that the students' point of view in this matter has a very narrow angle of vision, and that they have but a limited prospect of what is in store for them. The state is wiser than the youth and avails itself of his narrower individual motives to accomplish its larger social ends. If he will but submit to educational discipline, the motive which induces him to do so is a matter of indifference. The students of our day, then, or at least the great majority of them, recognize in the University an institution for vocational or professional training. Nearly all of them have to earn a livelihood, and they expect to do this the more successfully and under more favorable conditions by reason of the education they there receive. Experience shows that this expectation is in large measure realized and that our Universities are in fact organized chiefly to qualify young men and women to pursue the various vocations. In the University of California, a typical American university, this statement will not be questioned with regard to the Engineering Colleges, the Colleges of Agriculture, Commerce, Law, Medicine, Dentistry, etc., and the Schools of Education, Architecture, and Jurisprudence. In the College of Letters and Science there are doubtless some students, particularly among the women, who have elected no prospective vocation, but these become fewer in number towards the senior year of each class. In this small minority of the entire student body are to be found two very different types of students: Those who are drifting aimlessly and count for little, and those who are drawn away from the vocational purpose by the lure of the mystery of the universe, and who count for much. |