"Time Out" Should Be Given
As long as any nonacademic interest occupies first place in a boy's scale of values he should be given 'time out' to investigate it before he is sent to college. It may be that the boy will find that he is totally mistaken. A little actual experience on a farm may convince him that his interest in agriculture is not so deep as it once seemed; some time in a studio may reveal that his talent is not so great as he fancied. In that case, he can always return to college. But, until he has cleared the way for himself, and convinced himself that he belongs in college he will never approach his college work with that singleness of purpose which brings success and satisfaction.
It is not a waste of time for a boy to spend a year after leaving preparatory school in such experiment. Either he finds that he likes his work and continues in it or he finds that he does not and comes to college without misgivings. In either case, he will have avoided the aimless and meaningless college years which are the real waste--a waste of mind and spirit, as well as time, for many students. There is much talk now of the desirability of sending boys to college earlier, but I have found that some of the best students are those who have spent some time 'knocking about' in the world after leaving preparatory school.
Scholar Out of Place
It may seem an anomalous thing to say that the true scholar is out of place in our institutions of higher learning, but such is very frequently the case. Ever since the word went out that a college diploma was the only possible pass-key to wealth, wisdom, and social success, the rush of students coming to college for irrelevant reasons has threatened to swamp the true scholar. In 1895, the enrollment in American colleges was 45,000. At present it is well over 500,000. Some of the new arrivals came to snatch the technical training which would enable them to get good jobs as quickly as possible; others to make those contacts which are believed to be profitable in certain forms of business; others to postpone for four years the period of going to work; others to take part in the hurly-burly of athletics, fraternities, and other undergraduate activities which constitute college life; others, without any motive save that everybody else was doing it.
Artisan is the Tortoise
The artisan is familiar enough in every school, and, alas, in every college. He is the tortoise of the class, who struggles wearily on before the proddings of his parents and his schoolmasters. In the discreet fastness of the faculty room, his masters will tell you that he is a complete moron. His mother, on the other hand, will assure you that he is really quite brilliant, only he is so shy and sensitive that his masters never know it, for he becomes tongue-tied in class and paralyzed in examinations. Often enough, both are wrong. If the boy can be found some afternoon (when he should be studying) engaged in conversation with a neighborhood farmer, or chauffeur or shopkeeper, it may be observed that he is neither stupid nor reticent. In fact, he may be very wise about certain things, such as farms, or gasoline engines, or boats, and he can talk to you almost with eloquence about what makes the bees swarm, or what causes that sputter in your motor car, or how to shoot the sun with a sextant. If you take the trouble to ask, he will perhaps reveal to you his shy ambition to become a ranger in the government forestry service, to join the merchant marine, to be a dairy farmer, or to set up in business with his printing press.
Aviators a Problem
The problem of the adventurer is very much akin to this problem of the artisan. One of the greatest questions confronting the deans of Harvard Yale, and Princeton is that of undergraduate-aviators. At Princeton, the students are no longer allowed to have airplanes. At Yale and Harvard, undergraduate flying clubs flourish under very lukewarm official approval. In both communities, the clubs have become exceedingly popular. Their members are adroit and expert aviators, but, for the most part, lamentable scholars. The academic mortality of members of the flying clubs far outruns that of the pedestrian students; and naturally enough, for the members spend so much of their time at the airports that they soon leave their studies far in arrears. It is a far more challenging thing to a boy of this temperament to obtain his pilot's license than to labor all year for three dull C's and a D in his college courses. That being the case, would he not, more logically, be a student at an aviation school that at Harvard or Yale? In the end, he might decide that a college diploma is even more desirable than the pilot's license. If he did, he could then dismiss aviation from his mind, enter college, and settle down to work without any of the conflicts which now disturb him.
Few Artists Produced
It is, I think, fair to say that the colleges have trained very few creative artists in any field of art, with the possible exception of literature. Even in that department it is interesting to recall Barrett Wendell's complaint that, during his twenty-five years as a teacher of English composition, he had produced not a single great writer.
The system now in vogue at most colleges trains average people to do useful and honorable work along standard lines. But it does not encourage individuality. It helps and encourages students to follow the broad cement roads to quick and apparent forms of success, but it does not guide them along the side roads and bypaths which often lead to great and unexpected discoveries.
Most Are On Main Road
Most of us belong on the main road. The scholars, the artists, the artisans, and the adventurers do not. They are a small minority, but they are a very important minority. I appeal for them because it is more important to our civilization that one potential artist like Shelley, one scholar like Gibbon, one artisan like Edison, one adventurer like Lindbergh, be kept out of college than that a thousand more incipient junior executives, Ph.D. candidates, and museum curators be let in