The History of University Education in Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University (1876-1891). With supplementary notes on university extension and the university of the futureSteiner, Bernard C. (Bernard Christian)
History
The History of University Education in Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University (1876-1891). With supplementary notes on university extension and the university of the future
Steiner, Bernard C. (Bernard Christian)
Johns Hopkins University -- History; Universities and colleges -- Maryland -- History
But I use the term 'university education' for the further purpose of
defining the type of instruction offered. It is thus distinguished from
school education, being moulded to meet the wants of adults. It is
distinguished from the technical training necessary for the higher
handicrafts or for the learned professions. It is no doubt to the busy
classes that the movement addresses itself, but we make no secret of the
fact that our education will not help them in their business, except
that, the mind not being built in water-tight compartments, it is
impossible to stimulate one set of faculties without the stimulus
reacting upon all the rest. The education that is properly associated
with universities is not to be regarded as leading up to anything
beyond, but is an end in itself, and applies to life as a whole. And the
foundation for university extension is a change, subtle but clear, that
may be seen to be coming over the attitude of the public mind to higher
education, varying in intensity in different localities, but capable of
being encouraged where it is least perceptible,--a change by which
education is ceasing to be regarded as a thing proper to particular
classes of society or particular periods of life, and is coming to be
recognized as one of the permanent interests of life, side by side with
such universal interests as religion and politics. For persons of
leisure and means such growing demand can be met by increased activity
of the universities. University Extension is to be the university of the
busy.
My definition puts the hope of extending university education in this
sense to the whole nation without exception. I am aware that to some
minds such indiscriminate extension will seem like an educational
communism, on a par with benevolent schemes for redistributing the
wealth of society so as to give everybody a comfortable income all
round. But it surely ought not to be necessary to explain that in
proposing a universal system of education we are not meaning that what
each individual draws from the system will be the same in all cases. In
this as in every other public benefit that which each person draws from
it must depend upon that which he brings to it. University Extension may
be conceived as a stream flowing from the high ground of universities
through the length and breadth of the country; from this stream each
individual helps himself according to his means and his needs; one takes
but a cupful, another uses a bucket, a third claims to have a cistern to
himself: every one suits his own capacity, while our duty is to see that
the stream is pure and that it is kept running.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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