Fort Hays State University FHSU Scholars Repository Fort Hays Studies Series 1970 Fort Hays Kansas State College Inauguration 1969 Fort Hays Kansas State College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.fhsu.edu/fort_hays_studies_series Recommended Citation Fort Hays Kansas State College, "Fort Hays Kansas State College Inauguration 1969" (1970). Fort Hays Studies Series. 67. https://scholars.fhsu.edu/fort_hays_studies_series/67 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by FHSU Scholars Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fort Hays Studies Series by an authorized administrator of FHSU Scholars Repository. LD 2665 .K448 1970 I c.4 " '-- w INAUGURATION 1969 Fort Hays Kansas State College Inauguration 1969 7 Copyright 1970 by Fort Hays Kansas State College Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 7 4-631215 (ii) INTRODUCTION In October 1969 Fort Hays Kansas State College inaugurated Dr. John W. Gustad as the fifth president of the Western Kansas institution. This book includes the texts of the addresses given at the inauguration and during the week following the ceremony. Scholars from throughout the United States as well as dis- tinguished faculty members from the Fort Hays State staff appeared during the inauguration series. (iii) CONTENTS PAGE DR. WALT W. Ro TOW "Irr levance of th R le ant" . 6 DR. JoH W. Gu TAD "Our Object Is Man" 22 DR. E. LAURE JCE CHALMER ' JR. 'Con ocation-Tribut or Exp ctation" . 2 DR. LEO E. O LIVA "The Indian Battalion on th Santa Fe Trail" 36 DR. SA tJ:UEL J. SACKETT "How Can You B So Sure You're Right?" 5 DR. 0. MEREDITH WILSO r "Education and th Evolution of a D mocratic Society" . 74 DR. GERALD W. TOMA EK "Gra sland of Kansa " . 4 I iv ) WALT W . ROSTOW Dr. Walt W. Ro tow, professor of histo1y and economics at the University of Texas, reflect d on the continuing probl ms facing a new administration in th keynot addr s as the inv titure, "Irrel- vance of the Relevant." former presidential as istant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Rostow has combin d academic positions in th Unit d States and England with gov rnmental s rvice. H holds bachelor's and doctor's d grees from Yal and was a Rhodes scholar at Balliol College England. His published works includ books on conomics and diplomatic hi tory and policy. -5- The Irrelevance of the Relevant I In the fraternity of current intellectual and academic life there are few things .more worth doing than standing beside a colleague as he assumes the responsibilities of president of a university. The n ws every day underlines that university administrators are in the front line of national life, as we move forward to reshape our educational institutions to the nation's hopes and dreams and pur- poses. In coming h re to share this occasion, to honor Dr. Gustad, and to represent The University of Texas, I could not help feeling how fortunate this college is in having as President a man who combines experience of academic administration with long study and re- search in the field of psychology. As you will see, if there is a single theme that runs through the obs rvations I have to make, today, it is that, ultimately, education is an intimate, complex, and highly personal human experience. I am sure Dr. Gustad knows that better than any of us. My formal title is "The Irrelevance of the Relevant." In choosing that title, I was, of cours , aware that a good many students and others are pressing hard to reshape the subject matter of teaching in our universities around "relevant" subjects and materials. But, despite my title, I am not engaging in confrontation politics. I share many of the concerns of those who are now critics of our educational policies and who advocate change. I believe that we in the United States-and peoples in almost every part of the globe -are undergoing an educational revolution. This is a time in history when societies are moving forward on every continent, conscious that their future will be different from the present as well as the past. They are trying to estimate-to guess -what kind of educational system will best prepare citizens for those futures. And that means debate and change. Since 1965 we in the United States have seen the most massive and far reaching legislation passed by the Congress, under President Johnson's leader- ship, in all our history. This summer I traveled with my family around the world from Tokyo to England. We visited nations whose gross national product per capita ranged from, say $100 in Indonesia to over $2000 in - 6 - Western Europe. But whether we were in the midst of the roaring automobile age of Japan or the exciting take-off in Korea; in the early drive to technological maturity of Iran; or the late automobile age atmosphere of comfortable Paris or London-wherever we went, university problems were an inevitable and major subject of conversation. And this was true not merely of fellow academics but of prime ministers. The Koreans, for example, are confident that by the turn _of the century they will probably be as advanced as Japan is now: the Iranians are confident they will, by the year 2000, be at least up to the level of contemporary Europe. They are striving to adjust their educational institutions to those confident hopes. The fundamental problems of education in modern society are being re-thought and the institutions of education being reshaped as each nation takes stock of what it has inherited from the past and what it thinks it will need in the future. And that is also true of us here in the United States. But we know less about our future than South Korea or Iran, because right now we're out in front. We must be pioneers in education as we are in space-and as we once were in this part of the West. The adventure of building a satisfying and humane, decent and orderly life in the world of mass affiuence, modern technology, and bureau- cratic organization, is as challenging a task as our society has faced from its beginning. And what we do or fail to do in education will have a great deal to do with the outcome. In our country we are all aware that we have experienced a most extraordinary expansion in the scale of higher education. The fig- ures are familiar, but are worth repeating: in the school year 1939-40, about a million and a half students entered colleges and universities; in 1968-69 the figure was about seven million. More than 40 per cent of all Americans of an age to attend college now enter college; that is, more than half of all high school graduates. We have carried out this revolution for the reason that we Ameri- cans have done most big things in our history: because idealism and practical self-interest converged. As children of Jefferson still, we have continued to act in gradual fulfillment of the idea which underlies so much in our society; namely, the principle of equality of opportunity. And a college education is increasingly a basic human opportunity for those capable of qualifying for it. But we have also acted to expand college education because the kind of highly technological society we have created requires for its working force a vast corps of men and women who command tools and -7- persp ctives and habits of mind which a coll g ducation almo t uniquely can provide. Some have achiev d thes qualiti without a formal coll g ducation. Some who compl t a college ducation n· ver acquir them. But a colleg ducation is th b st d vice w know in our society to impart these qualities. It was, perhaps, Adam Smith who, in criticizing the irr levant curriculum at eighteenth century Oxford, first formally linked th right kind of education with economic development...:._or The Wealth bf Nations as he put it. No single act of legislation in our history did more for the economic and social development of our nation than the Morrill Act of 1862 which launch d so many schools d - voted to training in agriculture, mining, and engineering-many of which are now the kind of wide-ranging, compl te universities our society requires, a century later. And education has always b n th underlying basis for hope and faith that democracy could work. No contemporary study of economic or political development, past or present, would be judg d complet without ref rences to th educational system. I start, then, by assuming that education is a fundamental deter- minant of the kind of society we are and shall become; and a legiti- mate object of public policy. But education is also what happens to unique human beings at a sensitive and critical phase of their live.s . .Legislation and adequate financial resources are essential. Th y provide the necessary framework within which education can hap- pen. But they do not educate. For example, we are only beginning to face the simple fact that it is easier to take in students and to build buildings than it is to provide first-rate teaching. That is on of the central problems that we confront in making good the his- toric new commitments to education in the United States of recent years. When, in February, I returned to teaching, I was anxious to lay out a set of ideas on which I had been working for ten years and more.