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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 1899)
YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY _ = = corrected, threatens the future of the teaching profession with an over-abund- ant influx of inferior men. BENEFICIARY AID. The true policy in the matter of expenses and beneficiary aid would ap- pear to be as follows: st. In building new dormitories and other appliances connected with the daily life of the students, we should strive to use the kind of intelligent economy which any but the richest man would use in building a house for himself. We should construct them on the stand- ard set by our homes rather than by our clubs. In this way we snould create a general level of average expense in the college life which would attract rather than repel the boy who has to make his own way. We should indeed wel- come beautiful buildings, given to the university as memorials of affection; but we should strive to have them so de- signed that their beauty may be a means of enjoyment to the whole community. 2d. Tuition should be remitted with the utmost freedom to those who main- tain a respectable standing in college. Such tuition should be either earned by service or-.regarded as a loan—a loan without interest; if you please, or at any rate at a purely nominal interest charge, and payable at the option of the holder, PROF. GEORGE PARK FISHER, D.D., LL.D. but in its essence a loan—a thing to be paid ultimately, unless disease or death intervene. By establishing a system of sich repayment we could give aid far more universally than we now do, could perhaps lower the tuition fees in general, and could avoid a system of fraud which is at present practiced somewhat exten- sively on our colleges. 3d. All scholarship aid beyond the tuition fees, whether for undergraduates or for graduates, should be distinctly in the nature of a prize for really dis- tinguished work, or a payment for ser- vices rendered. I am aware that there are great practical obstacles which op- pose the carrying out of this view, and I do not feel sure how quickly Yale will be in a position to put it into effect; but that it is a desirable ideal and goal there appears to be no doubt whatever. Remuneration rather than pauperization — be the principle underlying such aid. Ath. Above all things—and this is a matter where we need the cooperation of persons outside as well as inside the university—the utmost study should be bestowed on the possibility of utilizing the powers of the students in such a way that they can be of service to the college community and ‘the world at large, and thus earn the aid which is given them. The problem is a most difficult one; too difficult even to be analyzed in the brief time before us to-day. But the amount of progress made already, in the few experiments which have been seriously tried, leads me to believe in an almost unbounded opportunity for ultimate development of this idea. shiek Sie Our third group of problems is con- nected with the development and_pre- servation of common student interests and student life outside of the immediate work of the class room. : RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES, _ Of all these interests, the most funda- mental are those connected with religious observances and religious feeling. Yale is, and has been from the first, a Chris- tian college. All her institutions show this throughout their structure. ~ methods. This was the dominant purpose in Yale’s foundation; and the work and thought of the children have conformed to the wish of the fathers. What changes time may bring in the outward observances, or how soon it may bring them, I know not. The question of compulsory attendance on religious exercises is one which is seriously discussed by the faculty, the students and the graduates; nor can we predict the outcome of such discussion. But this I know: that it is approached by all, young as well as old, in a spirit of wise conservatism and reverence for past usage, and that no change will be made unless it shall surely and clearly appear to those in authority that we are but modifying the letter of a tradition for the sake of preserving its spirit. TRADITIONS. - Even in matters of far less fundamen- tal importance we may, I think, wisely preserve this same spirit of conservatism. An ancient university has a great ad- vantage in the existence of a body of time-honored usages and _ traditions. Some of these it inevitably outgrows as time goes on. But a large majority serve a most useful purpose in binding the students together by bonds none the less real because so intangible. Such college customs and-traditions we should maintain to the utmost. Even where they seem artificial or meaningless we should be careful how we let them go. It is not inconsistent with the spirit of progress to value them highly. Edmund Burke was one of the most liberal and progressive men of his century; yet Burke was the man who set the truest value on those forms of the English constitution which, as he _ himself avowed, were rooted in prejudice. The constitution of Yale to-day, with its strange combination of liberty and privi- lege, or prescriptive custom and pro- gressive individualism, has not a few points of resemblance to Burke’s Eng- land. I can avow myself a conservative in the sense that Burke was a conserva- tive; with him, I should hesitate to cast away the coat of prejudice and leave nothing but the naked reason. - ATHLETICS. Another group of cohesive forces which strengthens the inflwence of a uni- versity upon its members is connected with college athletics. The value of athletic sports when practiced in the right spirit is only equalled by their perniciousness when practiced in the wrong spirit. They deserve cordial and enthusiastic support. The time or thought spent upon them, great as it may seem, is justified by their educa- tional influence. But side by side with this support and part of it, we must have wunsparing condemnation of the whole spirit of professionalism. I do not refer to those grosser and more obvious forms of professionalism which college sentiment has already learned to condemn. Nor do I chiefly refer to the betting by which intercollegiate contests are accompanied, though this is a real _and great evil, and does much to bring other evils in its train. I refer to some- thing far more widespread, which still remains. a menace to American college athletics,—the whole system of regard- ing athletic achievement as a sort of advertisement of one’s prowess, and of valuing success for its own sake rather than for the sake of the honor which comes in achieving it by honorable I rejoice in Yale’s victories, I mourn in her defeats; but I mourn ‘still more whenever I see-a Yale man who regards athletics as a sort of com- petitive means for pushing the university ahead of some rival. This is profes- sionalism of the most subtle and there- fore most dangerous sort. I know that the condition of athletic discipline in a college makes a difference in its attrac- tiveness to a large and desirable class of young men, and rightly so. Whether a victory or a series of victories makes such a difference, and increases the numbers that attend the university, I do not know and I do not care to know. The man who allows his mind to dwell on stich a question, if he is not tempted to violate the ethics of amateur sport, is at any. rate playing with temptation in a dangerous and reprehensible way. I am glad to believe that our colleges, and our nation as a whole, are becoming better able to understand the love of sport for its own sake. The growth of this spirit through three generations has relieved English universities of some of the problems which to-day confront us in. America. To the growth of this spirit we must ourselves trust for their solution here. I am ready heartily to cooperate in any attempts that other colleges may make to lay down clear rules for the practice of intercollegiate athletics, because the absence of such cooperation would be misunderstood and would give cause for suspicion where none ought to exist. But I cannot con- REV. JOSEPH H. TWICHELL, YALE 759. ceal the fact that the majority of such rules can only touch the surface of the difficuty; and that so far as they distract attention from the moral element in the case which is beyond all reach of rules, they may prove a positive hindrance to progress. If we can enter into athletics. for the love of honor, in the broadest sense of the word, unmixed with the love of gain in any sense, we may now and then lose a few students, but we shall grow better year after year in all that makes for sound university life. UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATION. Last in order of discussion, though perhaps first in the imminence with which they press upon us for solution, are some of the problems of university organization, on whose proper treatment depends that economy of effort and utili- zation of financial resources which is necessary for the efficient working of the institution as it stands and for its growth in the immediate future. It is hardly necessary to say to this audience that Yale’s organization differs. somewhat fundamentally from that of most other American universities. It is a group of colleges, whose property is held in the name of a single corporation, but whose management is, by, tradition and in some slight degree by legal authority, located in the hands of separate faculties. In this respect, Yale is not without points of resemblance to Oxford or Cambridge. I shall not try to discuss whether this system is on the whole a good one. It is here, and we cannot for the present change it. Like all other systems, it has its advantages and its disadvantages. The advantages are those which are possessed by local government everywhere,—an independ- ence of initiative; a loyal spirit among the members of the several faculties which is the natural result of such inde- pendence; a sort of natural grouping of the students under which a common set of rules can be made for each de- partment, and the evils of too great free- dom may be avoided. The independence of initiative has manifested itself in the development of new methods of instruc- tion, like those of the Sheffield Scientific School in the past, or the Department of Music in the present. The loyalty has been exemplified over and over again in the readiness to work for salaries even more conspicuously inadequate than those which have been paid at other universities, by men who seek their re- ward in the possibilities of future great- ness. This history of disinterested effort for future rather than present reward has repeated itself in each depart- ment of instruction. The effect of the grouping of the students in separate departments has shown itself in the preservation of that esprit de corps which Yale has succeeded in maintain- ing, I believe, to a greater degree than any other university of the same magni- tude. DRAWBACKS TO YALE’S SYSTEM. On the other hand, the system has the disadvantages which everywhere pertain = to a scheme of independent local gov-— ernment. There is sometimes a difficulty in carrying the whole university sharply forward into any definite line of policy, however strongly it may be demanded. There is yet more frequently a lack of. coordination in courses; the work of each of the separate parts or schools having been originally devised with reference to the needs of members of that school, rather than to those of the university as a whole. And finally, there is a certain amount of duplication of appliances, which involve some actual loss of economy and makes the impres- ‘sion on the public of causing even more loss than really exists. Especially severe does this loss seem to some of the most: zealous members of the pro- fessional schools, who believe that by combining the work of their opening years with that of the later years of the Academic Department or Sheffield . Scientific School, they can serve the University and the cause of learning with far more fullness and freedom than at present. Reform under these circumstances can only be the result of unconstrained dis- cussion and intelligent negotiation. The best possibilities lie not in the exercise of authority but of diplomacy. The effort to impose a prearranged policy is likely to prove futile. We cannot insist on an external appearance of harmony without losing more than we gain. To say that the Scientific School ought to have a four years’ course because the Academic Department has one, or to in- sist that the Academic Department should withdraw from the teaching of natural science because the Scientific School has made such full provision for it, serves only to retard the movement toward. cooperation. The president who would succeed in establishing real harmony must occupy himself first with providing the means to lead men to a mutual understanding, rather than with predicting the results . which should follow. FREE DISCUSSION NECESSARY. Foremost among the means which we must use is free and unreserved discus- sion of principles. Even within the departments, such discussion has been by no means so universal as it might have been. In more than one of them there has been a tendency, both in matters of administration and of educational policy, to rest content with a compromise be- tween conflicting interests, rather than a reconciliation of.conflicting views. A typical result of this policy is seen in the present course of study in the Aca- demic Department, where the so-called | elective system is really not a system at all, but the haphazard result of a com- petition between the advocates of differ- ent lines of instruction—a thing which all unite in desiring to reform. With a reasonable degree of diplomacy and patience, the task of reform in cases like this should not prove a hard one. Still less adequate has been the inter- change of ideas between the different GOVERNOR G. E. LOUNSBURY, YALE 63. departments. Under the old system the several faculties have had no organized means of discussing subjects of common interest, or even of learning one an- other’s views. The establishment of a university council for such interchange of thought is an imperative necessity. What will ultimately prove the best form and constitution for such a council can only be a matter of conjecture. For the present, at any rate, such a body is likely to be for the most part delibera- [Continued on 39th page.|
