African American college students -- Conduct of life; African Americans -- Conduct of life
The Bible teaches over and over again that freedom, without which
happiness is impossible, is self-imposed restraint, that to be really
free we must live within the law. He who lives outside the law is a
slave. The freeman is the man who lives within the law, whether that
law be the physical or the divine. All life is governed by law, and
the student must acquire freedom by obedience to law. The students in
any institution are divided into two classes: the happy, contented,
ambitious, hopeful ones, who have faith in the institution and respect
for its traditions, and the miserable, discontented, grumbling class.
One class live not only within the letter but in the spirit of the
law, and are consequently happy. The second class are miserable,
discontented and hopeless because they try to live outside the law.
No student can get much out of any institution who does not enter
whole-heartedly into its spirit, its traditions and its ideals.
The ability to do hard methodical work is one of the prizes which every
school worthy of the name offers to its students. The years at school
not infrequently give bent to the whole life. The student who does
slipshod work at school is more than likely to lack direction in his
subsequent career. But mental strength comes not as a bequest. It is
a prize that must be contended for right earnestly, and dictionary,
cyclopaedia, text-book and shop are tools which instructors place in
the hands of students to help them win the prize. The proper use of
these tools must depend finally upon the individual student. No one
gets much out of life who does not make his education a real, vital
part of himself. Many people have education very much as a parrot has
at his command a certain number of words or sentences. The words and
sentences that the parrot utters are no real part of him. They are
merely something tacked on to the parrot, and foreign to his real
natural make-up. Some people use education as they use their “Sunday
clothes,” on extra occasions only. They bring their education into
play when they are in the company of others, commit a few quotations
and use big words which have no working place in their vocabulary.
To try to make education a real part of one’s self is the way to get
most out of one’s school life. Just as the food a man eats becomes a
part of his blood and bone, so should education become a vital part of
him. Education must be digested and assimilated in order to make it
significant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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