Communications

...I had the precious privilege of a private interview with His Eminence, Cardinal Bourne, of London...

...This in brief, is the case for a number of Catholic colleges...

...It is a challenge...

...Let me suggest that those who are complaining that our Catholic colleges are not up to the mark show that their own education has not been defective by specifying in what respect Catholic schools generally are defective, and by giving facts to show that their specifications are as they aver...

...But it is high time we had an institution to compare with a European university...

...Just now it is said that there are too many Catholic women's colleges...

...The very words indicate that there can be no comparison...

...October 14, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 565 SUGGESTING A UNIVERSITY Pittsburgh, Pa...

...That a large proportion of the small college of which I speak is in earnest, I know by observation and by results...

...He was proud to point out that English Catholics carried ever so much more weight in English life than their proportionate number in the population would seem to justify...

...College of the Sacred Heart...

...There is an urgent need in this country for Catholic men and women who are really scholars, who can take the part of leader in the various phases of life...

...Even if it be true, as I for one think, that the whole tradition of our Catholic faith and culture is opposed to those conditions, be supplied with education which will fit them for life as they find it...

...Not only is it not "inconceivable that any of the students should achieve distinction in cultural activities:" one recent liberal arts graduate has actually done so...

...TO the Editor:—Mr...

...degree, 75 percent also obtained a high school teacher's certificate...

...As a suggestion, it might be possible, for instance, to start a school of letters (perhaps the greatest need we have is for Catholic writers of the highest calibre) with a nucleus of fifty to a hundred students, a school in which philosophy and history (from the much-neglected Catholic standpoint) would have equal weight with literature...

...These are the real objects of education...

...They ambition much better things...

...Fortunately it depends on the inspiration that is given to a student to bring out what is within him...

...nor should one over-value equipment, centralization and endowment...

...THE MIDDLE-WESTERN COLLEGE Cincinnati, O. TO the Editor:—The communication of C. Molanphy in your issue of September 23, saying that "the problem of inferior students in women's Catholic colleges is acute because the highest objective of the graduates is "to teach in the grade schools," is a statement that should not go unanswered...

...The students of the educational course are obliged to follow the curriculum mapped out by the state board of education as regards professional training, practice teaching and observation of high school classes...

...COMMUNICATIONS WHAT CATHOLIC GRADUATES DO Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Some years ago the Bureau of Education of the National Catholic Welfare Conference made a study of the occupations of graduates of Catholic colleges, both men and women...

...Culture is not easy to attain but the easiest way to secure it is through Catholic channels...

...T ~ ,, John D. Mattimore...

...No doubt the intensity of Catholic feeling in connection with education is more significant than the education itself...

...I think your readers would be interested at this time in some of the figures...

...In spite of all the handicaps, I have the feeling that they gave us a very good education...

...The results were published in the National Catholic Welfare Conference Bulletin for March, 1923...

...In disproof, I shall cite examples from the small college which I attend in the Middle-West...

...This, then, would be the embryo university to which, as time went on and means became available, would be added the various other functions of a university as such...

...This is no slight honor in a city which holds its musical standard high...

...The only way to obtain them is to found a university which will, in truth, be a university, which will look for its students to the cream of the smaller colleges, and which will build its faculty in much the same manner, as is already being done, I believe, at Fordham...

...There is an old American expression that Mark Hopkins sitting on one end of a log and a single college student on the other might represent a university in the sense of the breadth and depth of training of mind that would be given...

...John J. Wynne, SJ...

...Molanphy closes his letter with a comparison of American Catholic colleges and European Catholic universities...

...There are, for example, the problems of financing such an institution...

...That question is in the hands of Catholic colleges...

...The distribution with regard to occupation was as follows— Occupation Business: Priesthood: Law: Medicine: Teaching (lay) Occupation Teaching (lay): Sisterhood: Marriage: Business: Social Service: Nursing: Music: Graduate Study: Journalism: Literature: Civil Service: Miscellaneous: Total Number 299 89 76 28 18 15 14 14 12 8 8 74 Percent 45.65 13-59 11.60 4.27 2-75 2.30 2.14 2.14 1.83 1.22 1.22 11.29 Total: 655 Let these figures speak for themselves...

...Now that we are engaged in compiling the new encyclopedia, to be known as Universal Knowledge, and other similar works, just such young graduates of Catholic colleges and high schools are acting in the same capacity of editorial assistants, and they are quite competent to do so...

...And yet I think the Catholic women's colleges are doing excellent work and that there is room for more, rather than less of them...

...Thirty Chinese were to be killed for minor offenses, and many foreigners attended...

...Even so, in several cases, much of the virtuous condemnation of the troops was the result of personal feeling on the part of some correspondent who had (relying on the "power of the press") transgressed some military regulation, or whose fancy for Chinese curios had led him into conflict with the military authorities guarding the palaces and public buildings...

...I suppose the corollary of the expression would be that there might be a large number of machine shops and boiler factories on university grounds without constituting a university...

...The intellectual advantages in small colleges may be as great as those of nonsectarian universities, minus the dangerous philosophy and false reasoning sure to be encountered in those institutions...

...What opportunity have they had for inspecting the work which is actually done in such colleges, what are their qualifications for taking advantage of such opportunities, and what colleges have they inspected ? As trustee of two colleges, one for young men, the other for young women, as professor in colleges for young men as well as for young women during many years, as a member of a board of editors which has employed in editorial capacity graduates from many of our Catholic colleges, I think I am competent to speak with authority on this subject...

...Their distribution was as follows— Percent 27.44 22.27 18.63 10.06 9-63 1.64 1.25 1.06 1.06 6.96 Occupation Total Number Business: 701 Priesthood: 569 Law: 476 Medicine: 257 Teaching (lay): 246 Engineering: 42 Dentistry: 32 Journalism: 27 Public Service: 27 Miscellaneous: 178 Total: 2,555 100.00 Comparative figures for four colleges were as follows— Loyola Fordham Holy Cross Saint Francis (Chicago) (Brooklyn) Occupation percent percent percent percent Business: 22 23 23-3 36.2 Priesthood: 24 18 22.7 31-2 Law: 20 30.2 13-8 7-8 Medicine: 8-5 13.5 10.4 7-6 Teaching (lay): 3-5 4-7 18.1 4-9 Increases and decreases for the five principal professions in the case of a typical college were as follows— Class of 1901 Classofi9io Classofi9i6 percent percent percent 12.5 26.4 31.3 29.2 19.4 21.7 25.0 13.9 5.2 12.5 9.7 4.4 4.2 18.1 13.9 Of the colleges for women, reports from nine listed 655 names...

...The victim, a boy of twenty, was fastened to a wooden cross in the market place and cut to pieces with a butcher's knife...

...We should educate the flower of our colleges to right the conditions all thinking men are decrying...

...I could not help but feel that it was eminently true that they exerted ever so much more influence than we in America do, though we have a much larger proportionate number...

...of getting students who can afford to spend three or four years in addition to their already long years of study...

...and of obtaining a suitable faculty...

...Such a school, if situated in Connecticut, could draw on Boston, Holy Cross and Fordham—to mention only a few—without too seriously disturbing their schedules, for the greater part of its faculty, a sort of flying squadron...

...That it is to be a university is a point which must be grasped, for we have nothing in this country which can truly be called that...

...The editors of The Catholic Encyclopedia will unanimously vouch for the character of the work that these young people did for us...

...They are not studying for a time only or in order to "get through" quizzes, nor are they studying for the purpose of remaining on a basketball or hockey team...

...100.00 L. N. C. THE OBJECT OF EDUCATION New York, N. Y. HP O the Editor:—On my return from a pilgrimage to Rome, A which has kept me out of touch with life in America for several months, I turn at once to The Commonweal to be set au courant with the movement of thought here...

...Fordham now has some seven thousand students instead of the less than seven score of my time, with equipment to correspond, yet I am not sure that the undergraduates get a better education than we did...

...The names and occupations of 2,555 graduates were obtained...

...This college is incorporated under the laws of the State of Ohio with full power to confer degrees, and is listed by the department of education of the state as a standard college approved for preparing students to receive high school teachers' certificates...

...Of this number, 50 percent hold high school positions in the states, two are reflecting honor on their college training in Porto Rico, three are in the field of journalism,, doing creditable work on daily newspapers and current periodicals, and one in Washington, D. C, is busy in the multiform activities of the National Catholic Welfare Work...

...Our Catholic educational institutions, handicapped by straitness of means, are unable to give as expensive and expansive an education as secular and state institutions, bu{ 90 long as they give a Catholic education in the true sense of that term, they will surely make better citizens and inevitably prepare people for happiness in life...

...I know what a hard struggle it must have been to get along, for counting preparatory school, high school and college students altogether, there were less than one hundred and thirty students in the house...

...Of course, there are numerous difficulties in the way of such a plan...

...They are studying because they love it...

...As to great Catholic universities, we may not expect them to spring into being today or tomorrow...

...To affirm that the goal of these graduates is to teach in a grade school, or to obtain "a secretaryship at $40.00 a week," is ridiculous...

...Civilized warfare hardly seems possible after this...

...the elements from which the troops are taken are, generally speaking, neither moral nor sober...

...The solution of these problems lies possibly in doing these things on a very small scale at first...

...The economic and industrial conditions of this country make mass education necessary...

...How will they face it...

...He offers a remedy for a condition he thinks diseased, which remedy to me seems not only unnecessary, but quite undesirable...

...People were saying then, as they are now, that there were too many Catholic colleges and that it would be better for us to have fewer and more efficient institutions...

...One hears much of the cruelty of the foreign soldiers, but such sights make it possible to understand their severity—for be it remembered that the same cruelties and tortures, which foreigners now go to see in Pekin, were practised upon many of their compatriots during the Boxer uprising, and were reserved for them, had these same harsh and cruel troops not arrived in time...

...A great beheading was announced to take place, as all these Chinese executigns do, in the public street...

...We hear a great deal about 100 per cent American, but how much about 100 percent Catholic...

...Rev...

...The record of our college in the last four years, shows that of those who received the A.B...

...Following a musical career, she received the collegiate diploma (piano) from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, won first honors in the Ohio Singing Contest and appeared twice in concert with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra...

...Very naturally the discussion of Catholic colleges and the place that their graduates take in the life of the country at once attracted my attention...

...If education depended on externals, then it would have been almost impossible for a Catholic student of that day to get an education...

...It is easy for journalists and correspondents, recently arrived from home, to criticize the troops and speak virtuously of "civilized warfare" and the example of morality and sobriety our men should set to backward nations...

...By maintaining a number of small colleges, catering mainly to day-scholars, higher education (in the present significance of the term) becomes accessible to those who otherwise could not obtain it, and only thus...

...In a very few years now it will be half a century since I have been personally interested in Catholic colleges though, of course, I was only a high school student 564 THE COMMONWEAL October 14, 1925 in what was called Saint John's College, Fordham, at the time when I was in attendance...

...A beheading is one of the sights of Pekin...

...One can expect from the average troops nothing but what one can expect by the most rigid and unsparing discipline...

...That the last mentioned looks undauntedly "toward a career in social service" is not "a strange thought to the faculty," nor to the student body...

...What is needed just now is, as has been said, more interest in culture for its own sake, but culture is almost sacramental in the Church, and Catholic college education ought to be so steeped in it that cultural development ought to be inevitable...

...When the Encyclopedia was completed, not one of these editorial assistants found any difficulty in obtaining literary or editorial work elsewhere...

...Excite such men by sights and tales such as they must have seen and heard upon their arrival in China, and in what do they differ from the brutes they are sent to kill, except in their discipline ? Remove them for an instant from their discipline, and excesses must be expected...

...Nay more, we are proud to testify that if that compilation has been lauded by all its critics as exceptional for its accuracy, for its neatness of diction, for its correct proof-reading, for its uniqueness and uniformity of style—all this and other merit is due to the young graduates of Catholic colleges and even of high schools, who brought to their work a devotion and conscientiousness, and all the other moral as well as mental qualities which genuine education cultivates...

...Educational institutions, unfortunately the Catholic also, are just now entirely too intent on fitting their students to make money, while the secret of education, as stated by Dean West, of Princeton, is, "let us make men (and women) and they will find their work...

...It was four years later before we were given a holiday because of the presence of the 200th boy, who happened to be a collateral descendant of Robert Emmet and bore his name...

...According to the Regents of the State of New York, one model small college of the state is right here on Manhattan Island, and it is a Catholic college for young women...

...We deny that it is solely the prerogative of the larger college to broaden horizons, to appraise real literature and art and to foster self-development...

...Many of our students attend college purely for the cultural advantages, as is seen by their eagerness to secure the degrees of B.L., and A.B., and even master's degrees, without any intention of entering the commercial world...

...Unfortunately there is so much distraction in the large institutions of learning that there is very little successful education...

...When editing The Catholic Encyclopedia, we sought the assistance of men and women, and we little cared from what school they came, provided they were painstaking, accurate, well-read, well-informed, well-grounded in history, literature, philosophy, and sufficiently familiar with art, science, sociology...

...The alternative is public or non-sectarian colleges where anything but Christian morals, sociology and philosophy are taught, opening thereby the sinister possibility of loss of faith at worst, or at best, leaving out of the lives of the greater number the beacon light of the great Catholic doctrines...

...James J. Walsh...

...Molanphy's letter concerning the multitude of Catholic colleges contains much of interest, but in my humble opinion he is shooting a little wide of the mark...

...Not long before, there was inflicted on a servant who had killed a mandarin, his master, the punishment of the "hundred wounds...

...Of the colleges for men, eight representative colleges of arts and sciences were chosen for study...

...Mary {Catherine Earls...

...Such a system of education should not be the ultimate goal, a9 Mr...

...Molanphy and others have pointed out...

...After trying out, to our bitter cost, young men and women who had come from colleges that are supposed to be the last word in education and in culture, we found that the young men, and particularly the young women, who came to us from Catholic institutions, not all of them even of collegiate grade, were all that we could possibly desire...

...Meanwhile, we have to work out our salvation...

...They represent, I think, exactly the same problem as our Catholic men's colleges had to face fifty years ago when there were comparatively so few Catholics looking for the higher education and more colleges than could be supported with proper dignity...

...A COLLEGE TRUSTEE SPEAKS New York, N. Y, TO the Editor:'—It might be well if the correspondents who are finding fault with Catholic colleges would let your readers know what experience they have to justify their writing on this subject...

...In addition it would be readily accessible to a great number of gifted laymen who no doubt could be induced to act as special lecturers...

...I have had the comforting experience of having a number of men in my middle years envy me my education—especially what they were pleased to call the thoroughness of it—and while, of course, that may be just narrowness of view on my part, I do not think that I have ever known anyone else whose education I would have exchanged for the one given me, except possibly in certain phases of graduate work...