America Has Not Been Interested

Another reason for the conservatism of the American college may be that the American public displayed no interest in any such experimenting. The well-trained mind was not in any great demand on a continent where good health and steady habits were almost the only prerequisites to fortune. The conditions have not greatly changed with the passing years. The American people, progressive in many other points, have been utterly reactionary in their points, have been utterly reactionary in their attitude towards intellectual training. Parents have discourged concentration upon study, and employers have put more emphasis upon the non-academic record of the candidate than upon his work in the classroom.

Students are also saying to the professors: "The funds of the college have hitherto been secured from alumnae whose emotions have been stirred by emotional appeals to the spirit of the old college. Future appeals for funds, if they are to come from us when we attain the dignity of graduates, will have to be based upon reason and upon proof of the need. Our affections for this our temporary place of residence, will probably be no less than that or our predecessors, but it is going to be of a some what different nature. We shall remember our college not in the golden glow of careless youth, but with the clear memory that there the pathway of our life, for the first time, lay clear before us."

And we teachers are not unmindful of the validity of such arguments, or of the wide-spread nature of the questions that have provoked them. There is scarcely a college executive or a college teacher today, who, would refuse the invitation of a body such as the National Student Federation to cooperate with you in the laying out of a program by students for study of the American college, and for the discovery of ways in which it can better meet the students of today. My chief criticism of the American college executive is that he does not sufficiently trust the students. His own distrust is the starting point of a vicious circle. From his distrust arises the paternalistic system of college government. From the paternalistic system there comes the postponement of important decisions by the student. From this postponement of important decisions there follows immaturity, irresponsibility and preoccupation with trivial rather than important issues. I firmly believe that if the American college will adopt a different attitude toward the student this circle will be reversed. Adopt the attitude of trust and the faculty will become colleagues rather than governors of the students. Faced with the necessity of governing their own conduct the students will become responsible. In acquring responsibility they will no longer be amused by the more superficiaities of student life. . . . .

Seven Surveys Proposed

Upon these two hypotheses, then, that faculties and students should be colleagues rather than master and man, and that the way to get a responsible attitude toward study is to grant responsibility in the conduct and choice of study, would propose certain fields for investigation by the National Student Federation. All of them are debatable fields lying between organized activities. All of them need, it seems to me, the most careful cooperation between faculty and students, if that vitalizing of the courses of study which we all desire is to result. These fields are; (1) the student and his support; (2) the student and his choice of life work; (3) the student and his political status; (4) the student in academic and non-academic life; (5) faculty research and undergraduate instruction; (6) the choice of the college and the choice of the field of work; and finally, (7) the college student and find other college students. In all these fields, it seems to the, gaps exist, which prevent under-standing, and which prevent students engaged in one field from seeing the meaning of the other. The American college is like one of the American states ten years ago, before the good roads movement had struck its citizens. Only at certain seasons of the year was contact possible at all along the highway. When the good movement began highways were flung out from this center and from that, most of them without leading anywhere and not linked up with any major systems of the continental traffic. Now the good roads movement has learned to think in continent, at terms and traffic is continuous