College prolongs infancy

College prolongs infancy

... the ideals and methods which are dynamic in our institutions of higher learning are false. They are false to the students, false to the social purpose which nourishes them, false to the inward nature of education itself. They are false because they are irrelevant. And they are irrelevant because they are for the most part unabsorbed survivals from a pre-industrial past in an industrial age. Though education is customarily described as preparation for life, the ways and works of high schools and colleges are so irrelevant to life that their prime achievement remains perforce the prolongation of infancy. They make adulthood harder to reach, not easier. First, perhaps, he would appreciate the gargantuan inflation of pedagogic lore, with its elaborate formalism, its pretensions to precise measurements of mind and character, its blowing up scientific method into a meticulous ceremonial with the efficacy of a church ritual. Second, the overgrowth of the educational plant might captivate him: the immense accretion of endowment, the blowsy additions to properties, and the multiplication by millions of teachers and students. Lastly, our ironist might admire a wide and spreading unrest about the effectiveness of the system as an instrument of education. He would take note of much fuss and ferment respecting progressive education and adult education. He would overhear oracles by parents, teachers, and college presidents on why students do anything but study and on how to make them study. He would discern how the prescriptions vary, all the way from Mr. Lowells house-system at Harvard University to Mr. Meiklejohns experimental college at the University of Wisconsin. As a popular alternative, the suggestion would intrigue him that far more students are enrolled than are fit for the higher education, and that this aristocratic privilege should be limited to the fit alone; the fit, of course, being those young people who are shown to be as nearly like their teachers as differences of age, income and interest permit. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 68570
Author: Kallen, Horace Meyer
Release Date: Jul 19, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: The John Day Company
Publication Date: 1932
Publisher Country: United States