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Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Butler Alumnal Quarterly University Special Collections 1917 Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1917) Butler University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly Part of the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Butler University, "Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1917)" (1917). Butler Alumnal Quarterly. Book 7. http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly/7 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Special Collections at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Butler Alumnal Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ^, - m. Butler Alumniil Quarterly FOUNDERS DAY NUMBER APRIL, 1917 Vol. VI No. 1 M-''Ai""'a-'s<-Tk/:i. n INDIANAPOLIS i* National Educational Agency 1129 STATE LIFE BUILDING INDIANAPOLIS. IND. MARY FRANCES WILSON, Manager We place applicants in all lines of school work. Teachers, Supervisors, Principals, Superin- tendents, College and University Professors. We furnish County Institute Instructors, Speakers for Commencements, Parent-Teach- er Associations, Clubs of Educational and Social Character. We place talent for Chau- tauqua and Lecture Courses. ;hy be content with ordinary jewelry when you may have our special designs and high grade workmanship at no higher prices? It is human nature to admire the beautiful. To combine use and beauty is the highest art in craftsmanship. This is our aim in making jewelry. We want you to judge of the result by an examination of our stock. Our frat and school jewelry is of the same high quality and moderate price. C. B. DYER, JEWELER 234 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE Our things are different Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 witii funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/butleralumnalqua06butl iFounber'si JDap—iFebruarp ^cbentl) An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man — Emerson Jf'' <^^) Butler Alumnal Quarterly Vol. VI INDIANAPOLIS, IND., MARCH, 1917 No. i The Founder's Day Address A SPECIFIC TASK FOR THE AMERICAN COLLEGE By Robert Lincoln Kelly President of Earlharn College There are some things concerning which we have sentiments, and there are other things concerning which we have passions. If the people of this country have a common passion, that passion is for education. We differ on questions of politics and of creed, and on ethical and social standards, but we are a unit in the advocacy of education for our children. It follows that this business of educa- tion has become a phase of big business. I do not use a rhetorical phrase, but express a plain fact. Only a few years ago we had for the first time a billion-dollar Congress, and the "outs" very severely criticised the "ins" for, their wicked extravagance. To-day we are spending as much for education as we spent a decade ago in running the entire government. We stand on a good many platforms, but in each and every one of them there is an educational plank. But, while it is true that we are engaged in a national enterprise which commands great material and spiritual resources, it is also true that we do not have a national system of education. There has never been a serious suggestion of central direction in our educa- tional activities. Our education also is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our motto has been, here a little and there a little. The processes of coordination and standardization are at work, but they have far to go. Our work is characterized by a delightful and inspiring spontaneity. You cannot standardize the passion of a hundred million free men, 2 Butler Alumnal Quarterly But there have been and are some outstanding phases in our edu- cational development. Our greatest single achievement is our public schools. This is not only our greatest educational achievement, but it is probably America's greatest single con- tribution to modern life. The public schools form a democracy in miniature. They are the formative centers of our civilization. They are our greatest pride and our most fruitful agency of advancement. They interpret best of all of the creations of our hands or minds, the genius of our people. The progress of the American high school during the past decade or two, to become specific, is one of the miracles of educational work. The develop- ment of the State university in the Central West, with its countless ramifications, has never had a parallel in the history of higher educa- tion. The Department of Superintendents of the National Educa- tional Association is an organization whose scope and power cannot adequately be estimated. The growth of the vocational idea in various sections has been almost like a rushing, mighty wind. Pub- lic education in many States is polarized by the vocational ideal, equipment, processes, products. Vocational education, at least for the moment, is gripping the nation. As the logical conclusion of this demand for the practical and useful, we witness the establishment of the modern school on the Flexner pattern, under the auspices of our greatest educational foundation, in the greatest teachers' college of our most cosmopolitan city. While the public schools in their various manifestations have been developing in many directions and have assumed enormous proportions, one element which formerly characterized American education has been slipping away. The religious element has been disappearing. Not that there has been special antagonism to reli- gion, but that the forces of the school have been preoccupied with other matters. The process has been the process of secularization. The apologist for it would call it a process of emancipation. In so far as the public schools have freed us from sectarianism, they have operated for the public welfare. As a people we do not wish to be in intellectual or moral or spiritual bondage. We would not be ruled by another hand, living or dead, by custom or by tradition, or by the church or by the State. We would have our education un- Founder's Day Address 3 trammeled. We would aspire to the method of Socrates and Jesus in directness of approach to the task at hand. But in attaining the method of Jesus, we would not lose His spirit. Is there involved in the secularization of public education also the despiritualization of public education? In casting overboard the rubbish of the past, we are in danger of casting overboard also the most priceless values in our cargo. That we have lost some of the needful ballast from the hold of our ship is eloquently proclaimed by the remarkable activity of leaders in public education throughout the country who by one device or another are providing for the restoration of the religious element in so far as that is possible into public education. It is a remarkable phenomenon we are now wit- nessing, that of public school men urging the representatives of the church to renewed activity in religious education. It has become one of the spontaneous educational movements of our times and every- body is more or less familiar with the Colorado Plan, the North Dakota Plan, the Gary Plan, and their various modifications in many States. It is a matter of no little gratification that in Indiana there are probably more high school students enrolled for Bible study for school credit than in any other American State. It is an interesting fact that when enormous pressure from the outside was being placed on curriculum makers to admit many new subjects of study, the pressure for religious instruction was not felt because not exerted by religious leaders. The churches themselves therefore must bear a large part of the responsibility for whatever ill results are following, if there be such, the tendency toward the complete secularization of public education. The Protestant churches largely abandoned the educational field at the same time the State was fostering the process of secularization. They were occupied with the stupendous task of evangelization. They had their hands full. Their supreme effort has been to bring men into the Kingdom by the doorway of conversion. Their plan has been to allow sin to marshal vast armies and to build up by the power of habit all but invulnerable armaments. Against the elaborately con- structed fortifications of the enemy they have centered their artil- lery and they have battered down many a stronghold. They have been baptizing, confirming, reclaiming, sanctifying, saving; they 4 Butler Alumnal Ouarterly have been snatching the firebrands from the burning, but they have not been educating. They have, indeed, done some catechizing, but they have scarcely laid the foundations among the children for a broad and intelligent religious faith, much less established a process of purifying society at its fountain head. The Church leaders have been evangelists, pastors, preachers—these have been most needed for the type of campaign the Church has been conducting—but they have not usually been teachers, certainly not educators. The educa- tional arm of the Church has not been developed. Rather shall we not say that the educational arm of the Church has become impotent from disuse, for it must not be forgotten that in America the Church was the pioneer in education, and the State to a large extent learned the science and art of teaching from the Church. To be sure, the Church has certain educational agencies. These have developed to meet peculiar needs and they have become quite numerous. Among them undoubtedly the leading one is the Sunday school, and in recent years in certain quarters it has made marvelous educational advance. But, speaking in general terms, these agencies, although educational in form, have not been and are not, in marked degree, educational in spirit.