SERVICE TO STALE, TEACHER'S WATCHWORD
Follette, Robert M. La
Service to Stale, Teacher's Watchword BY ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE (From La Follette's Autobiography] IT IS difficult, indeed, to overestimate the part which the university has played in the...
...His addresses to the students on Sunday afternoons, together with his work in the classroom were among the most important influences in my early life...
...His occasional letters and his writings were always a source of inspiration to me...
...Years afterward, when I was Governor of Wisconsin, John Bascora came to visit us at the executive residence in Madison, and I treasure the words he said to me about my new work: "Robert," he said, "you will doubtless make mistakes of judgment as governor, but never mind the political mistakes so long as you make no ethical mistakes...
...and he was in advance of his time in feeling the new social forces and in emphasizing the new social responsibilities...
...it was rather the spirit of the institution—a high spirit of earnest endeavor, a spirit of fresh interest in new things, and beyond all else a sense that somehow the state and the university were intimately related, and that they should be of mutual service...
...In those days we did not so much get correct political and economic views, for there was then little teaching of sociology or political economy worthy the name, but what we somehow did get, and largely from Bascom, was a proper attitude toward public affairs...
...The guiding spirit of my lime, and the man to whom Wisconsin owes a debt greater than it can ever pay, was its President, John Bascom...
...It was his teaching, iterated and reiterated, of the obligation of both the University and the students to the mother state that may be said to have originated the Wisconsin idea in education...
...He was forever telling us what the state was doing for us and urging our return obligation not to use our education wholly for our own selfish benefit, but to return some service to the state...
...Service to Stale, Teacher's Watchword BY ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE (From La Follette's Autobiography] IT IS difficult, indeed, to overestimate the part which the university has played in the Wisconsin revolution...
...He was the embodiment of moral and mental enthusiasm...
...That teaching animated and inspired hundreds of students who sal under John Bascora...
...And when all is said, this attitude is more important than any definite views a man may hold...
...For myself, I owe what I am and what I have clone largely to the inspiration I received while there...
...I never saw Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I should say that John Bascom was a man of much his type, both in appearance and in character...
...Up to the last his mind was clear and his interest in the progress of humanity as keen as ever...
...John Bascom lived to be eighty-four years old, dying last fall, in 1911, at his home at Williamstown, Massachusetts...
...The present President of the University, Charles R. Van Hise, a classmate of mine, was one of the raen who has nobly handed down the tradition and continued the teaching of John Bascom...
...In his later years he divided his time between his garden and his books—a serene and beautiful old age...
...It was not so much the actual courses of study which I pursued...
Vol. 19 • August 1927 • No. 8
