As to university education, the fundamental notions of Dr. Hall are
a clearer and more definite statement of those of Bacon and Fichte,
which the modern advancement of science and his own experience as a
university president have enabled him to make. The university stands
chiefly for specialization in scholarship. Its inspiration is the
conquest of truth, extension of the domain of human knowledge, and
consequently of human power. Its education is in and for and by a
free, though at first guided and assisted, investigation. Not merely
accumulating what has already been found and refined, but digging
out yet undiscovered mines of facts and laws, is its chief task. The
university in this sense is the culmination of adolescent education.
It cultivates in the youth the creative ability which does not, like
the mere carrying capacity, weigh down the possessor; the sense of
I-can-do-something-important, which gives one confidence, and poise, an
enthusiasm which is not fanatic, a genuine attitude of respect, even
of reverence for the efforts of all seekers for truth. It calls forth
“truthfulness, integrity, morality in every direction, self-sacrifice,
and what perhaps includes them all, enthusiasm for the highest ideals
of living and thinking,” by laying demands upon these best qualities in
man’s character.
The right of a larger manhood has been the claim of all the educational
reformers deserving the name. The unfolding of the total man has
been their repeated assertion. But they have always fallen into one
or another form of one-sidedness--mainly on account of their narrow
conception of the human soul. Here comes another renovator with his
“new psychology,” which he believes “will surely take the place of
the older concepts of soul, as the theory of evolution has taken the
place of those of life,” and claims for it the potency of bringing
about a total reconstruction of our educational spirit and methods.
His own pedagogy is a still incomplete, unfinished, and ever-enlarging
construction. But he opens the way for the philosophy of education,
which is to be “one with that of history and of life,” and predicts
with the zeal and vision of a prophet its future position:
“If evolution is true, the time will come, as certainly as the sun
will rise to-morrow, when it (pedagogy) will be the basis of a new
harmony, unity, and organization of the sciences, and instead of
being the Cinderella in their circle, it will supply the criterion by
which they are all judged; it will grade and evaluate each product of
culture” (4: p. 383).
REFERENCES
1. +Harris, William Torrey.+ Report of the Subcommittee on
the Correlation of Studies in Elementary Education. _Educational
Review_, Vol. IX, March, 1895, pp. 230-289.
2. ---- Social Culture in the Form of Education and Religion.
Proceedings of International Congress of Arts and Sciences. Houghton &
Mifflin Co., New York and Boston, 1907. Vol. VIII, pp. 1-16.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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