Student life

“ School days deal with an earlier period of life than the college age, when the student is usually more susceptible to strong influences. The school that first gave you the determination to do something worth while in the world, the school that called forth your best self and set your heart on fire with a noble purpose, has a claim upon you that you can never forget. ”

“ If the college courses have been wisely planned and faithfully followed out, the student ought to stand at its completion with powers of body and mind and heart so developed, trained and informed that he shall be fitted to enter upon his special work with a clear understanding of the relation of that work to the thought and life of the world, and with sympathies so wide and so permanent in their breadth that they never shall become narrowed to the compass and ends of his own profession or occupation. ”

“ If you wanted to go still further and be a benefactor to the college at large, you endowed a competitive scholarship and set two or more pallid students working themselves to death to get it.
The real thing for the student is the life and environment that surrounds him. All that he really learns he learns, in a sense, by the active operation of his own intellect and not as the passive recipient of lectures. And for this active operation what he really needs most is the continued and intimate contact with his fellows. Students must live together and eat together, talk and smoke together. ”

“ In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; ”

“ To make all this more direct we may look to the various sources from which enthusiasm may be derived. What does the school give us in this direction? Intellectual drill, broadening of mental horizon, professional training, all this we expect from school, college, and university and in every phase of this there is room for a thousand enthusiasms. Moreover, the school gives us comradeship, the outlook on the hopes and aspirations of our fellows. It opens to us the resources of young life, the luminous visions of the boys that are to be men. ”

“ But while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his education was proceeding in another school—the school which, as in his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real discipline for life—the world of real men and women. ”

“ The work of instruction, while it is going forward, should be the business of both teachers and scholars. If children are habituated to industry, to close application, to hard study, and to good personal, social, and moral habits during the period of their attendance upon school, these habits will be favorably felt in after life, in the development of characters whose possessors will be at once respectable and useful members of society, and a blessing to the age in which they live. ”

“ The discipline and training of a high school course will not only increase the earning capacity of your boy, but it will increase his living capacity.—He will see more beauty in the evening sunset, God’s wonderful watch care in the stars overhead, and more and sweeter fragrance in the pansy at his feet. It will develop character and manhood, give him thoughts and ideas of his own, make him broader in his views of life, and raise him to a higher standard of manhood. ”

“ In addition to its purely educational advantages, the social and moral atmosphere of the school is of a high grade, tending to the building of character, the refinement of manners, and the cultivation of the real amenities of life. ”

“ Leaders in the stirring world of to-day return at each commencement to share the fresh life of the new class. Books, pictures, music, collections, appliances in every field, learned teachers, mirthful friends, athletics for holidays, the best words of the best men for holy days,—all are here. No wonder that men look back upon their college life as upon halcyon days, the romantic period of youth. ”

“ Many of these parents, whose hard-working lives have always spelled duty, choose each year to beat their way against rigid economy, penury, and bitter loss, that their sons may possess what they themselves never had, a college education. And [9-11] when we have found, below all his boyish pranks, dissimulations, and masqueradings, the true undergraduate, we may also discern some of the pervasive influences which are to-day shaping life upon this Western Continent; for the undergraduate is a true glass to give back to the nation its own image. ”

“ The more my friends and I wandered afield with our little superficial interests and talents and passions, the more was the straight-forward earnestness of the school our blessing; and all that beautified and enriched our youth, and gave to it freshness and liveliness, would have turned out to be our ruin, if our elders had taken it seriously, and had formed a life's program out of petty caprices and boyish inclinations. ”

“ In essence, the secondary and tertiary academic establishments impose a double life on the students that enter them. One life is defined by the so-called “serious purpose” of the higher education: the course of study, the examination, the diplomas, the degrees. The other life is defined by the psychological traits, the wants and the frustrations of young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four. One life is the life of the classroom. ”

“ School had developed her capacity for pleasure and enjoyment: not until Life had developed her capacity for sorrow and pain would her education be complete. School had taught her to speak, to dress, and to act correctly: Life must teach her to feel. ”

“ But in the very process of the exercise there comes numerous opportunities for the richest lessons of the school course. It gives the opportunity for teaching lessons of patience, patriotism, duty, love, respect, obedience, gratitude and devotion. Kindness to animals, appreciation of the beautiful in art and nature and literature, higher ideals of life, faith and hope and charity, and greatest of all the criterion of the really educated person, liberal-mindedness—all of these should find food in the unifying process of the school, the opening exercise. ”

“ The success of these courses in bringing boys back to school, in enabling others to catch up with their grade, and in keeping others in school, points strongly to the fact that for a great many pupils at least some work which will link their school course to the activities of everyday life is necessary. ”

“ In accordance with these principles, the object of the system of college education in America has always been development and discipline of character, and the broad preparation of the student for his subsequent special or professional pursuits. ”

“ This will quicken their ambition to keep those tools effectively at work after the college days are over. That is the way students are formed; genuine, thinking students I mean, who will remain students all their days, whatever profession or occupation they may embrace — whether they devote themselves in quiet seclusion to the researches of “science for its own sake,” or whether they engage in the bustling competitions and contests of life. ”

“ A right use of the opportunities of instruction afforded me in early youth would have made me a scholar ere my twenty-fifth year, and have saved to me at least ten of the best years of life—years which were spent in obscure and humble occupations. ”

“ If pure learning is to survive as one of the purposes of universities, it will have to be brought into relation with the life of the community as a whole, not only with the refined delights of a few gentlemen of leisure. ”

“ We owe it, then, to the reading-aloud fetich that in many of our schools the children are compelled to spend the last two (or even three) years of their school life—the most important years of all from the point of view of their preparation for the battle of life—in marking time, in staying where they were. ”

“ But an Honours or M. A. class must have enough boys to make it possible to hold discussions, mutual criticism of papers written by the boys, and informal exchange of ideas by students of the same “school”. In such classes the teacher’s duty is to inspire and guide, the student must do his own reading and noting, and therefore the impact of keen young mind on keen young mind is absolutely necessary to stimulate, precipitate and clarify thought. ”

“ The second desire is to aid those who are passing from youth to maturity and grappling with problems incident to this critical age. Having spent eight years away from home, in academy, college and law school, I have reason to know the conflicts through which each individual has to pass, especially those who have the experience incident to college life. ”

“ In this juxtaposition of the various activities, therefore, the child has impressed upon him that school life is a unity in breadth, just as the combining of the elementary and secondary school impresses him with the fact that his school life is a unity in length. ”

“ The interval has confirmed me in the opinion that it would be a distinct gain to many boys to take advantage of such a scheme if made available. They would go out into the world from the university at the age of twenty far better equipped and prepared for life, both as regards knowledge and interests, tastes and character, than by going straight from school at nineteen. ”

“ To all children, so soon as they can be promoted from the kinder garten—perhaps even to the higher grades therein—instruction in the conditions of human well-being, and in the phenomena and arrangements of social life should be given, and should be continued throughout their school career. ”

“ In these Public Schools the whole education of children is directed to the cultivation of their heads or intellectual faculties alone. The heart, with all its moral and mysterious emotions, is entirely [Pg 80] neglected. Every mental power and acquirement is intended and directed to promote their prosperity, success, and happiness in this life ”

“ School and academy and university graduates, who after years of active and it may be eminent professional life look over the examination-papers of alma mater and the catechisms of their childhood, find invariably that outside of the special lines of their lives they are unable to answer correctly and with certainty the simplest questions, and must conclude that all the wisdom of the world is with sophomores and school-children. ”

“ Why a student? Because it was an enterprise which a desperate student might very possibly conceive, but the servants never. And if a student,—then there certainly exists somewhere in the school a plague-spot which must be discovered and cleansed. ”

“ Having stationed the duty of acquiring knowledge in the center, connect with it the various lesser duties of school life, such as punctual attendance, order, diligent and conscientious preparation of home lessons, etc. These are means to an end, and should be represented as such. He who desires the end will desire the means. Get your pupils to love knowledge, and the practice of these minor virtues will follow of itself. ”

“ In school work when we are successful children attend to those stimuli which promise most for the formation of habits, or the growth in understanding and appreciation which will fit them for participation in our social life. We seek constantly in our work as teachers to secure either free or forced attention to the particular part of our courses of study or to the particular experiences which are allotted to the grade or class which we teach. ”

“ Beautifying the schoolhouse and schoolroom, having a library and a few pictures and casts, and making school life attractive are suggestions to be worked out, and the value of teaching sewing, cooking, the care of babies to girls, and manual training to boys.
IV—HIGH SCHOOLS
The subject of the high schools will naturally succeed this and the first paper may take up the question, Why do so few boys and girls go to high school? Is it only because so many go into business life? Is the preparation for college adequate? ”

“ The student hears. When he speaks, when he sees, when he is in the company of his companions when he takes up some branch of art: in short, when he lives he is independent, i.e. not dependent upon the educational institution. ”

“ One of the benefits of a college education is, to show the boy its little avail. ”

“ There are men in colleges, whom I know, surrounded by their books in pleasant college communities, fitted to a delightful social and intellectual life, teaching in classrooms filled with students who do not have to fight for a living as do the students here, yet they are not happy men ”

“ The action by which a youth becomes a college student—the simple going forth—leaving one set of circumstances and voluntarily entering another, with a specific purpose—is an action which has educating influence in it. ”

“ Aside from the curriculum, what is the atmosphere that a boy breathes as soon as he sets foot on a college campus? Is he trained in honesty, in politeness, in high ideals of speech, in lofty conceptions of character? Does he have to obey orders? Is he taught to be neat, prompt, and industrious? Such questions are of things too often taken for granted, and too often lacking. ”

“ And secondly, I have tried to show that the school does interest itself in the moral life of the pupil. As a matter of fact, the school does more to develop morality and to lead toward a sane [Pg 156] religious life than all other agencies combined. Our modern American school is a wonderful institution. ”