TOTAL LOSS OF THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 17, 28 April 1906, Page 44

TOTAL LOSS OF THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY

A TERRIBLE BLOW TO THE CAUSE OF LEARNING AND CULTURE

Interesting details concerning this immensely valuable seat of learning, by Dr. David Starr Jordon, President of the University at the time of its destruction.

Amid all the terrible disasters and almost irreparable losses sustained in the awful cataclysm at 'Frisco, several may have been more costly in dollars, but few will leave a greater void than the destruction of the famous Stanford, .Junior, University. The institution was in its way quite unique, and at this juncture all -will read with deep interest and sympathy an article of ( “THE IDEALS OF THE LAl’® LELAND STANFORD, JUN., UNIVERSITY,” so unhappily destroyed. It is by the President of the University, and alter perusing it every reader of the -‘Graphic” will hope that some millionaire will arise and re-endow n university which aims so high and has done so much good. THE IDEALS OF LELAND STAMFORD, Jr„ UNIVERSITY. (By Dr. David Starr Jordan, President.) On October 1 it will he exactly eleven years since the Leland Stanford. Jr., I niversity first opened its doors to students. At that time a New York newspaper expressed the belief that “the need of another university in California was about as great as that of an asylum for decayed sea-captains in Switzerland.” It was predicted that the professors would for years to come lecture to empty benches. This satirical prophet has been found without honour in California. The facts are all against him. On the opening day there were 465 students in attendance. There are certain ideals for whieh every institution stands, and Stanford University has its ideals. One of these is that a university should have character. We know men not by their common humanity, but by their particular individuality. Men at large have eyes, ears, arms, legs, temptations. affections and inany other common human qualities. We know and prize our friends not for these, but for the few traits which each may hare for himself alone. So it is with the university. All universities have books, desks, laboratories, microscopes, teach-

ers, rules and regulations. These make the school, but they do not give it its character. It is the trait of personality that makes the university. It is not its regulative processes, its teaching of grammar, algebra or the laws of physics which win to it love and trust. It is the spirit of the institution—■ strong, helpful, rich, earnest, beautiful or the reverse—which makes the university a real organism. Stanford University, above all things, pretends to be. It has NO POMPOUS CEREMONIES TO J CONCEAL IDLE ACTION. s It has not place for make-believe, whether pious or worldy. It lets no mere form toneeal or obscure the reality which is its justification. It stands for thoroughness and fitness. Thoroughness means mastery. 'The most thorough training is the most practical, if fitted to possible or worthy ends. In this the college education of the past has most often failed. It has thoroughness but not fitness. The substitutes for it, trades schools, professional schools, and the school of experience, had fitness enough, but lacked in thoroughness and breadth. To relate college training more closely to life without at the same time narrowing it and weakening it, is the great problem in education. To this end the American University unites in itself three different functions that of the college, that of the professional school, and that which is distinctive of the university. The college is now, as ever, a school of culture. It aims to make wise, sane, well-rounded men who know something of the best that men have thought and done in the world. It has not discarded Latin. Greek and mathematics, which were so long the chief agents of culture, but it has greatly added to the list. It has found that to some minds at least better results come from the study of other things. Greek-mindedness is necessary to receive from the Greek all that this noblest of languages is competent to give. But for the average man there is better substance in English than in Latin, in the physical or natural sciences than in the Calculus. And most important of all, we find that in the main it is safe to trust the choice of whether the training shall be in the classics or in science to the student himself. The college function of the university must not be despised or belittled. Be-

«*t»e Germany has no colleges, because ber students go directly from the high school ' at home to the professional school or university, some have urged the abandonment by the American university of this primal function of general culture. In their eagerness to develop the advanced work, some institutions have relegated the college function almost solely to tutors without experience, and have left it without standards •nd without serious purpose. It is not right that even the freshmen should ho poorly taught. On the soundness of the college training everything else depends. In the long run the greatest university will be the one that devotes the most eare to its undergraduates. THE SECOND FUNCTION OF THE UNIVERSITY IS THAT OF PROFESSIGNAL TRAINING. To the man once in the path of culture the professional school adds effectiveness in his chosen calling. This work the American universities have taken up slowly and grudgingly. The demand for instruction in law and medicine has been met weakly but extensively bv private enterprise. The schools thus founded have been dependent on students’ fees, •nd on the advertising gain their teachers receive through connection with them. Only a few of our professional schools to-day demand university standards. Those which do not cannot share the university spirit. They have no part in university development. Only in the degree to which they are part and parcel of the university do they in general deserve to live. THE CROWNING FUNCTION OF THE UNIVERSITY IS THAT OF ORIGINAL. RESEARCH. On this rests the advance of civilisation. From the application of scientific knowledge most of the successes of the nineteenth century have arisen. It is the first era of science. Behind the application of such knowledge is the acquisition of it. One Helmholtz, the investigator, is the parent of a thousand Edisons, the adapters of the knowledge gained by others. The real university is • school of research. That we possess the university spirit is our only excuse that we adopt the university name. A true university is not a collection of colleges. It is not a college with an outer rim of professional schools. It is the association of scholars. It is an institution from which in every direction blazes the light of original research. No institution can be college, professional school and university all in one and exercise all these functions fully in the four years which form the traditional college course. To attempt it is to fail in one way or another. We do attempt and we do fail. In the engineering course of to-day we try to combine in four years professional training with research and culture. This cannot be done, for while the professional work is reasonably complete, culture is at a minimum, and research crowded to the wall. The subject of law requires three solid years for professional training alone. Three or four years of culture work go with this, and are surely none too many. The same requirements must soon be made in engineering. This we ean do in the four years of college culture: we can show' the student the line of his professional advancement, and can see him well started in its direction before he has taken his first degree. We can give in the college course something of the methods and results of advanced research. In any subject the advanced work has a higher culture value than elementary work. To know one thing well is, in Agassiz’s words, “to have the backbone of culture.” By limiting the range of individual training to a few things done thoroughly it is possible to give even to the undergraduate some touch of the real university method, some knowledge of how truth is won. Thus is welded together the three functions of the university, and this is what will give to the American university its most characteristic feature. In the new university, as in the best of the old one in America, THERE IS NO GENERAL CURRICULUM OR RACECOURSE OVER WHICH ALL MUST RUN. The initiative In choice of studies rests with the individual. His own free will determines the direction of bin trtining, and the further require-

menfs are those deemed necessary to make his choice most effective. The elective system, which Stanford stands for in its freest sense, assumes that there is no one course of study best suited for all minds and purposes. The student can arrange his work for himself. under proper advice, better than it can be done beforehand by any consensus of educational philosophers. It is better for the student that he should make mistakes sometimes than that he should be throughout his course arbitrarily directed by others. The elective system is the strongest agency in the training of the will. It is, therefore, a most effective force in moral training. In the early days of Stanford University the students chose as its motto the words of Ulrich von Hutton: “Die lutt der Freiheit weht.’’ “The winds of freedom are blowing.” The scholar cannot breathe in confined air. He must have the whole universe from which to draw his conclusions. He must have the whole atmosphere with which to express them. That the university may have freedom it must exist for its own purposes alone. It cannot serve ecclesiastieism and be a university. Partisanship and truth cannot get along together. “It can acknowledge no master in human form” if it is to be loyal to its highest purposes. BUT WITH ALL THIS, THE REAL SECRET OF PALO ALTO IS UNSPOKEN. It can be defined or expressed. Each one who enters its gates takes away a little. Something of it is disclosed in the spirit of adventure which led the students in ’95 to entrust their education to the wholly’ untried, but grandly possible. Something of it is seen in the spirit of friendliness and sacrifice which bound us all together in the days of doubt and stress, and which shows no sign of abatement now that the skies are dear and bright. Something of it is seen in the beauty and fitness of the quadrangle itself, the architectural motive of the Franciscan Missions strengthened and suited to the needs of another mission equally hallowed in its purposes. The student has no need of luxury. Plain living has ever gone with high thinking. But grace and fitness have an educative value which must not be forgotten. These long corridors, these stately arches, the circles of waring palms, this noble ehureh, the sweet tones of brgan and bells, all will have their part in the student’s training as surely as the chemical laboratory, the shop and the seminary room. Each stone of the Quadrangle will teach its lesson of grace and genuineness and live in the heart of every student.