The Cultural College 
 
 in a 
 
 New Era 
 
 Walter Edwin Peck, M. A. 
 
 Address delivered on invitation of its Faculty at 
 
 the 104th Commencement of Hamilton 
 
 College, June 19, 1916 
 

 
The Cultural College in a New Era 
 
 The American College is on public trial. 
 The jury is composed of critical citizens 
 who, for the main part, have never seen 
 the inside of a college class room. Their 
 standards are, perhaps, for us too de- 
 cidedly utilitarian. Yet these folk are 
 to adjudicate the case. So serious has 
 the contest for the perpetuation of the 
 American College become that Nicholas 
 Murray Butler has just now admitted for 
 the defense: "As I view the facts, the 
 traditional American College is disap- 
 pearing before our eyes and will, unless 
 the disintegrating forces are checked, 
 disappear entirely within another gene- 
 ration or so." A most unfortunate ad- 
 mission from an apologist for the Ameri- 
 can College! A western college professor 
 has said: "If the college has something 
 to offer our social, intellectual, and moral 
 life which neither the high school, the 
 university, nor the technical school can 
 offer; if it has a distinct and beneficent 
 contribution to make to American civilza- 
 
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tion, the college should remain, and en- 
 lightened public opinion will demand its 
 jealous preservation. If, on the other 
 hand, it but accomplishes what a year or 
 two added to the high school together 
 with the professional school can do equal- 
 ly well, and even more cheaply, then by 
 all means the college should go." Ap- 
 palling, that any American educator 
 should thus attack the college as it is! 
 Yet clearly, if the case is to be carried for 
 the defense, something must be done. 
 For the prosecution has preferred many 
 charges. 
 
 The first of these is that most of our 
 American colleges are today guilty of 
 mere slavish imitation of the universities, 
 the technical schools, and even — more's 
 the pity! — the upper years of the high 
 schools. The function of the true college 
 seems to be confused with that of other 
 types. The result is, as William P. Trent 
 has aptly remarked, "We are requiring it 
 to do all sorts of things for all sorts of 
 people, and then wondering why it does 
 not do an ideal sort of thing for a special 
 sort of people." Between the various 
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 fl 1916 
 
types ruthless competition is the inevi- 
 table consequence; competition for en- 
 dowment, competition for students, com- 
 petition for public approval for what? 
 For doing the same work, in each case. 
 The responsibility, of course, rests upon 
 the shoulders of institutions of all the 
 types; but just now the American College 
 is being held for the reckoning. It must 
 abandon these pretensions to the work 
 that is properly within the province of 
 the high schools, the technical schools, and 
 the universities — or be ruled out of court. 
 For it is, in the eyes of this somewhat 
 cynical jury, the least necessary of the 
 four types. 
 
 The second charge concerns the devo- 
 tion of the faculties of our colleges to 
 outworn fetishes, discarded shibboleths of 
 education whose efficacy in the social or- 
 ganism of today cannot be adequately 
 defended. There is little doubt that there 
 is at present too great emphasis in the 
 American College upon subjects, and too 
 little attention to the motives, laws and 
 mechanism of thought production. Only 
 those subjects should remain in the cur- 
 
riculum which can be made, and will be 
 made to develop the thinking of the 
 student, and will give him that "land- 
 scape" in his life for which our own 
 honored President has so often and so 
 eloquently pleaded — that vision of which 
 our nation now stands in unquestioned 
 need. But all such subjects of the older 
 curricula which have proven themselves 
 worthy should be retained or reinstated 
 according to modern organization and 
 methods. In the last fifty years the ten- 
 dency has been to renounce too readily 
 those subjects against which Ikonoklastes 
 had raised a hue and cry, however justifi- 
 able his plaint. 
 
 Again, the prosecution holds that the 
 college student of today in the halls of 
 learning rarely recognizes his Mistress 
 Knowledge, but hurries away at the tinkle 
 of a gong to his true love on the athletic 
 field. And the facts are at hand to sub- 
 stantiate the charge. So fearful is the 
 youth that he may become a ' grind" that 
 he races through a certain set of assign- 
 ments, flings himself into a dress suit, 
 and is off to sing his way to fame, per- 
 4 
 
haps, or bob to public applause in some 
 trifling farce. For to neglect the outside 
 activities for attainment in the class room 
 would be, unquestionably, to set himself 
 against the crowd. Social graces he 
 magnifies beyond all reason, and in pur- 
 suit of them spends most of the time of 
 his college course. The bane of such mis- 
 placed emphasis he realizes only when he 
 has graduated. Now the value of these 
 diversions, individually considered, is not 
 questioned. The evil is in that they are 
 become the principal concern — the sine 
 qua non — of undergraduate life. 
 
 As members of college faculties we are 
 charged with responsibility for this con- 
 dition in that we tolerate slipshod work 
 in the class room. To this charge, so 
 generally true, there is no answer, not 
 even a plausible excuse. As institutions 
 of higher education many of our colleges 
 are a travesty upon the ancient honor of 
 the name. What we will not accept if we 
 select our students from the secondary 
 schools — superficial attainment — we too 
 often approve by accepting careless work 
 done in the Freshman year in college. 
 5 
 
The student soon discovers that it is not 
 necessary to obtain more than a D, or a 
 C — "gentleman's grades," so-called, and, 
 following the line of least resistance 
 pointed out by a lenient faculty, he gets 
 no more than this D or C. The college 
 faculty has allowed the reins to slip from 
 its nerveless fingers, and the students 
 have taken them up. No longer is the 
 faculty leading; it is being led; and the 
 low standard of performance of the 
 proper tasks of the college, degraded by 
 the too-numerous student activities and a 
 weak faculty, becomes the reputed stand- 
 ard of the college among those who are 
 "beyond the pale." Unless the faculties, 
 backed by firm governing bodies, resume 
 control, there is little hope for the Ameri- 
 can College. 
 
 And when we do resume control, let us 
 make of our colleges what they should al- 
 ways have been — republics of learning. 
 Faculty and student body should be vitally 
 and constantly concerned in the actual 
 search for Truth. The class room should 
 be a never-failing source of inspiration, 
 where there is instilled in the thinking of 
 
the pupil the spirit of curiosity to know, 
 to become in fact a Seeker. No force will 
 so certainly transform the college from 
 what it is to a temple of wisdom than 
 scholarly research and creative activity 
 on the part of every member of the 
 faculty. Given daily in the class room 
 the concrete illustration behind the desk, 
 of the scholar who knows whereof he 
 speaks when urging original investiga- 
 tion upon his class, the youth will not be 
 so loth to follow in his steps. And these 
 years of a student's life, no less than those 
 usually given to university work, are, 
 psychologically considered, years well 
 spent in such tasks. It is not too early to 
 infuse in the student's mind the inner 
 meaning of culture. When the lesson is 
 deferred beyond the habit-forming period, 
 he does not attain the heights. No com- 
 promise is possible. The college that 
 would realize its ideal must rid itself of 
 all incumbrances of inferiority and sloth- 
 fulness and cleave the way for those 
 who seek that which, according to its pro- 
 fessions, at least, the college has to offer — 
 EDUCATION. 
 
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In order to accomplish this, we must 
 change our class room methods. Instead 
 of insisting that the student impassively 
 receive a certain predigested mass of 
 ideas by dictation or other method, we 
 must make it clear to him that unless he 
 manifests a genuine grasp of the subject, 
 and ability to cope with it in general dis- 
 cussion, he will not receive the approval 
 of the professor as having completed a 
 given course. Original thinking and ex- 
 pression, not a handsomely-penned note- 
 book, should be the criterion. A com- 
 mendable idea for testing a student's 
 comprehension of a part of his education, 
 at least, is that in vogue at Harvard, 
 where a special final examination upon 
 the whole of a student's investigations in 
 the division of history, government, and 
 economics is required. The plan is de- 
 rived from the old world and was once 
 operative in certain American colleges. 
 Final examinations upon the subjects in 
 the curriculum might be deferred until 
 three-and-a-half years of the college 
 course had been completed. This would 
 be a revolt against smattering and cram- 
 
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ming. Only broad and thorough knowl- 
 edge of a field could meet this crucial test. 
 Of no less importance is the necessity 
 for the moral guidance of students in this 
 truly critical period of their lives. The 
 American College may not abdicate its 
 duty of bringing, or (as is usually the 
 case) of keeping the student to a right at- 
 titude toward his God. That thesis is 
 false which holds that the student, while 
 under the control of the college in all else, 
 should not be subject to its direction in 
 moral choices. The numerous and baffling 
 forms of immorality in thought and con- 
 duct that are the curse of many "liberal- 
 minded" colleges are unanswerable argu- 
 ments for obedience to His command who 
 said "Feed my sheep." Of course, no 
 faculty can make such an impress upon 
 its students as should be made unless it is 
 itself frankly and positively Christian. 
 In these days of the travail of Europe, 
 the capricious and whimsical materialism 
 in our colleges is one of the greatest 
 menaces to our republic. For in them 
 are the leaders of tomorrow trained, and 
 if the inestimable value of the Christian 
 9 
 
religion in faith and practice is not im- 
 pressed upon them now, of what kind 
 shall be their conduct of the nation to- 
 morrow? The hazard is too great! 
 
 With a promise of good behavior, then, 
 the American College is dismissed from 
 the court. But it is dismissed on parole. 
 Unless these evils are permanently rem- 
 edied it will, in the new era, be crowded 
 to the wall by institutions of the other 
 types. 
 
 Whither shall we go? The American 
 College must assume its fitting place as 
 a cultural institution. Emphasis must 
 be upon the humanities and the social 
 sciences. But unless it teaches a deeper 
 appreciation of Life, which is but a con- 
 tinual series of momentous choices, and 
 prepares the student for living by intro- 
 ducing him to the lore of human history 
 and human achievements, that he may 
 choose wisely and well; unless it trains 
 him to think consecutively, and judicially, 
 and to act with determination; unless it 
 indicates the eternal verities and the One 
 Great Verity, God; unless it inspires him 
 with a throbbing desire to serve God and 
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Man through realizing the fullest possi- 
 bilities of his own talents in relation to 
 the good of Society ; unless, finally, it 
 teaches him humility, and a sensitive re- 
 gard for all that is beautiful in Nature 
 and Man, it will not fulfill its mission. A 
 tremendous task — aye! But in the per- 
 formance of it in this "blood-red eclipse 
 of Europe," as the light of the Old World 
 wavers and grows dim, the American 
 College shall inherit, at last, the Kingdom, 
 the Power, and the Glory. 
 
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