Two Schools for Men
November 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 65 TWO SCHOOLS FOR MEN DURING the past two weeks, two important matters have been noticed with some attentiveness: Armistice Day and education. The idea of...
...Then too, it cannot be forgotten that the war itself led the American people to intensify their interest in education by drawing their attention to the valuable qualities of leadership and developed intelligence...
...Our modern attorney was to take a longer breath...
...And although Richard Rolle was, as a recent book again reminds us, deeply indebted to Saint Thomas for ideas of social justice, he himself was about as far from "college" as it is possible to think a brilliant student could be...
...We know only that while the educative process does not seem, by common consent, to have brought forth the governing minds so greatly needed and desired, it has for centuries victoriously produced its own especial personality—the man of study and wise understanding, of reflection and divination, of creative insight and expression...
...Men who pick their way step by step through the entanglements of actuality, often arrive at a mastery which no theoretically trained person can rival—a mastery which reposes upon inherited virtues, industry, and experience...
...Mystics, for instance, are not campus growths...
...But it ought not to pass unnoticed that Armistice Day itself has a very especial relation to the training of men...
...It may be that intensive intellectual training might have done something for these men...
...Now even if one cannot say that the future of education in the United States depends upon the success with which our effort to realize a national dream can be carried through, it is certainly quite likely that the dream itself will fade...
...The older lawyer had frequently been a country boy who, by dint of lingering over his books in a law office, had managed to prepare for the bar and a firm, strictly legal career...
...The generation which followed the summons to battle has literally swarmed into the college classrooms...
...Perhaps there is something akin to the mystical in those temperaments which shape human destinies and control the directions of the state...
...And, of course, the most varied recipes were advocated, the most notable being the blending of cultural study with professional training...
...What we all thought we wanted was the "leader" —the man who can control, direct, and inspire as the army officer supposedly does...
...But quite possibly, their equals cannot be developed by ever so strenuous applications of academia to a personality not qualified to reach the goal set forth...
...There was virtually no professional training which did not envisage this dream of "leadership...
...Education became, therefore, an endeavor to create energy...
...Its goal was dynamic...
...He is Duns Scotus, Edmund Spenser, Cardinal Cusano, or—let us say—Walter Pater...
...It has flooded the whole academic area, creating problems of space and efficiency which did not exist previously...
...The army which so powerfully suggested the theme of leadership should also have demonstrated that nature is vitally concerned...
...First of all, naturally, there is the effect which this commemoration of the dead must have on the minds of a generation still able to recall what the lads who fell in battle or died in camp were like when they lived, and still freshly conscious of the universal consequences of the great catastrophe...
...Without this man the world of historical civilization is inconceivable...
...Most important of all, however, was the effect which came from the desire for a certain kind of training...
...First, he would read through the literatures and philosophies, incidentally trying out his powers in that peculiar miniature democracy called campus life...
...Then, he would enter, mature and already a cultured gentleman, upon the study of his special science...
...But conceivably there is not a thing in the world to be gained through trying to supplant him with embryo leaders by means of whom a distraught democracy wishes to hoist itself into the saddle...
...The most varied assortment of courses would not produce a Tauler or a Suso...
...The idea of setting apart a definite portion of the year for the especial consideration of the achievements and problems of the school is not merely excellent in principle, but also effective in practice...
...To speak of the innumerable programs which have stressed the cause of education would be impossible even if we cared to do so...
Vol. 5 • November 1926 • No. 3
