Does College Train the Citizen ?
Johnson, Burges
December I, I926 THE COMMONWEAL IOI DOES COLLEGE TRAIN THE CITIZEN?
By BURGES JOHNSON (In this article, the fourth in the series on modern education, Mr. Johnson, who contributed ar~ artide...
...In brief, my suggestion for argument's sake is a town meeting in full control of the social life of the campus, with voting rights con- ferred upon the two upper classes and the faculty...
...A young glee-club manager cancels an engagement with a body of alumni under- writers and he does so in a curt note, although a hall has been engaged and tickets sold...
...No student manager may sign a contract until his board has money in the bank or advance pledges and subscriptions with which to pay...
...They are not interested in preaching economy...
...This coun-cil, representing all the graduates, takes steps to be- come intimately acquainted with the conduct and equip- ment and policies of the college, and then to swing the influence of the whole body of alumni into line with it...
...It is true that in such a legislative body, the officers of the college could be outvoted...
...Yet a faculty committee has approved his schedules...
...and the few who do learn may be so overburdened by af- fairs of campus government that they cannot benefit greatly by the classrooms...
...or that each graduate owes his college some unpaid balance of tuition fee...
...The change of plan is due to little more than a whim...
...but how can they learn if they never know that the mistakes were made...
...Yet there are plenty of dassrooms in his university where business problems presented by these campus activities might be used as effectively as any theoretic situation in a text-book...
...If the entire college is one community, all members of it should share responsibility save only those who are preparing for citizenship...
...Everyone who has dealt with students will agree that in such an assembly the voice of experience exercises an almost undue influence...
...Such an assembly might well be trusted with all cam- pus control outside the classroom--and all discipline, from athletic field to forum and dance floor...
...If the alumni give, it is because they wish an oppor- tunity to share in the service of education, and it is pleasant to do so through the agency of the college they know so well...
...This force is now in a way to be organized and controlled by means of alumni councils whose executive secretary is, in some colleges, almost a member of the faculty...
...Too many will fail to com- prehend the purpose of the whole organization--they are so disturbed about the policing provided by student government itself, and found to be still necessary where so many are immature...
...Yet some of them have stated that they have a high percentage of bad debts...
...A university professor met this comment promptly with the statement, "We have stopped all that sort of thing...
...yet there was no such circulation and many copies remained un- sold...
...This should be a harder task than post-graduate teaching, with more hours in its day, and a greater variety of tests to determine one's fitness for it...
...Effective organization must be the outgrowth of experience, and a student generation has a conscious life of less than four years...
...If all are not willing to share in the problems of campus govern- ment, they should be teaching in a post-graduate school...
...It is only the residential small college, I believe, which could thus apply its every energy to a training for citizenship...
...In expression of opinion, he must be free to follow where truth seems to lead, without op- position from any source, so long as he evidently recog- nizes his share in maintaining the spiritual, mental, and physical well-being of the college community...
...But until they suc- ceed in the complete unification of all forces with the definite purpose of training leaders for democracy, we should hardly be surprised if democracy refuses to turn to the college for its leaders...
...This is po-called student self-government...
...It was paid for in further part by students who could, in many cases, ill afford the $5.oo it cost, though at true value it was worth only $3.o0...
...Secondly, certain sentimental fictions must be dis-carded, as, for instance, that the college owes some- thing to its alumni by reason of their gifts...
...Instead, it may be but a groping reaction against the arbitrary control of high-school days...
...All of the foregoing are wasted words unless they lead to some constructive proposition...
...First of all, the danger from their mass pressure must be clearly recognized and stated...
...Most of the campus activities in any college are under student direction and should remain so...
...Naturally, business concerns appear in this field and seek student patronage...
...where buildings are deemed of least importance...
...Yet too few of the teachers, who must all share in the authorization for such polic- ing, assume their share of obligation either to do away with it, or explain to their own classes the dominating purposes which justify it...
...These boys should learn from their mistakes I" True...
...but they were coerced by college loyalty...
...it was paid for in part by advertising bludgeoned out of local merchants by student soliciters who promised a circulation equal to the student enrolment...
...It stands for the isolation of those affairs which are strictly student affairs...
...Illustrations of loss due to this estrangement crowd to my mind as a result of interested inquiry in many parts of the country...
...Intercollegiate competition leads to a steadily increasing lavishness of expenditure...
...At the worst, I do not think that it involves hypocrisy so much as self-deception...
...Policing again l In that very college the "annual" cost 3 ~ percent more than such a job was worth in the competitive market...
...And is it not true that where there is an effort toward "student government," some students are giving more time than they can well spare to direct student affairs ? In this vaguely outlined picture of a fanciful small college, what is to be done with the alumni...
...In many colleges it is possible for student managers of glee clubs or newspapers or debates to carry on business correspondence that should shame a printer's devil...
...Student self-government is a pleasant thing to talk lO2 THE COMMONWEAL December I, 1926 about...
...If campus life is to be co6rdinate rather than inde- pendent, who is to control or direct it...
...Yet their salesmen are the only skilled advisers the students may turn to, wherever this feeling exists that student activities should be free of faculty "control...
...In colleges throughout this country, managers of class "annuals" are signing printing and engraving contracts amounting to more than a million dollars an- nually, and perhaps totaling two million...
...His relationship is only that of a policeman or visiting bank examiner with the law behind him...
...The teaching in such a college must not be confused with that in a post-graduate school...
...By BURGES JOHNSON (In this article, the fourth in the series on modern education, Mr...
...Nine-tenths of the student managers know nothing themselves about printing costs...
...Each instructor shares responsibility for far more than the transmit- ting of knowledge in his special field...
...There are no such debts on either side...
...There has been no signed contract and the alumni laugh ruefully and agree not to offer assistance the next year...
...At the end of the year, the editorial board divided up a bonus, and unsold copies representing several hundred dollars of retail value were junked...
...Many of these college annual pub- lishing concerns are merely middlemen who farm out the jobs to printers, engravers, and binders...
...Within the classroom itself, the teacher would still exercise arbitrary power...
...I would im- agine an undergraduate college whose every nerve and bone and sinew are co6rdinated for the training of leaders in a democracy...
...This is desirable unless the tail begins to wag the dog...
...Objection is raised that teaching members of the community cannot give the time from their work to become involved in such complicated machinery of campus government...
...But this is not co6peration...
...and where all activities upon the campus are, in effect, laboratories of the classroom...
...But some of them have to give even more time to just such things under a bicameral r6gime...
...Curi- ous, how we have here a training in one of the worst characteristics of a democracy l If there is an expert at hand, avoid him l Democracy means the right to make, each year, last year's mistakes all over again...
...to enter into undesirable business arrange- ments...
...Is it likely that they can afford to figure closely on their contracts ? "We control all that form of student activity in a very simple way," says a western college president...
...The phrase itself'would suggest a campus training in a citizen's responsibilities...
...but is not that better than having them outwitted, or their arbitrary rules evaded...
...They can learn little from their own group experiences in the past, unless those members of the community who have lived in it more than four years add their memories...
...Their increasing interest in college affairs has lately been much discussed...
...Johnson, who contributed ar~ artide on the subject to the last issue of The Commonweal, concludes his views...
...December I, I926 THE COMMONWEAL IOI DOES COLLEGE TRAIN THE CITIZEN...
...Let me try to formulate it for purposes of argument...
...The series will be continued in forthcoming issues.--The Editors...
...T HERE is another obstacle that often prevents students and teachers from stepping directly out of the classroom discussion of citizenship into the laboratory at the door...
...But to balance him are other graduates who have had to un- learn a vast deal of bad method that they acquired be- cause of some responsibility thrust upon them when they were not competent to bear it alone and unad- vised...
...Some of them are successfully over- coming one and another obstacle...
...I am sure that more than one college president is even now struggling to unify the entire life of his organization and point one dominating pur- pose for it all...
...The curtness of the letter is due to ignorance of good busi- ness usage...
...But if the providing of expert faculty advice, and the seeking of it, means student subservience and the surrender of student "rights," then the whole social atmosphere of the college needs changing...
...And the student manager never knows that he has acted disgracefully or in a way that in later life would subject him to lawsuit...
...If they can share further by their friendly visits to the campus, so much the better...
...Not the students alone...
...but sometimes it may be a fiction for outside consumption, and a sop to the students themselves...
...and to leave organization bills unpaid, with a creditor unwilling to press the matter and gain student ill will...
...to break understandings that are as definite as contracts...
...The sentimental graduate is fond of asserting that in his undergraduate days he got more out of his busi- ness training as a team manager than out of any other one thing which happened to him in college...
...where courses of study, whether relating to the wisdom of the past or the new knowl- edge of today, are all so organized as to apply to a responsive and responsible life now...
...another town has been suggested, with pleasanter social aspects...
...In colleges where such ma- chine.ry is most highly perfected, comparatively few students learn to deal well with large groups of their fellows, even in such surface matters as learning how to take part in and preside over student meetings...
...He must be constantly aware of the social problems of the campus, and his classroom must share in their solution and point their parallels in the larger problems of the world outside...
...A faculty committee scrutinizes all student accotints and contracts, glee-club engagements and the like...
...They make themselves responsible to these other concerns for student payment...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 4
