STATUS OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION DEFINED

The current issue of the North American Review contains an article on "Culture" by President Lowell in which he discusses culture as attained by college and graduate school studies. The following is an extract:

There is nothing in the world more elusive than culture. One cannot define or circumscribe it, for it has no precise bounds. One cannot analyze it, for its components are infinite. One cannot describe it, for it is Protean in shape. An attempt to encompass its meaning in words is like trying to seize the air in the hand, when one finds it is everywhere except within one's grasp. Culture is like what the ancient Hebrews called wisdom in that it has no fixed habitation, but is all-pervading and imponderable in its essence. Everyone who has experienced it knows something of it; no one knows it all; to no two people does it wear exactly the same aspect; and yet to all who have in it any share it appears real, substantial and of measureless worth.

In general, the term is used to denote something distinct from a command of the tools of one's trade. The lawyer, for example, or the physician, or the engineer, may have a complete mastery of all the technical learning of his profession without possessing culture. This is evident at once when he comes into contact with men of other professions. He may talk profoundly about his own subject, but have nothing intellectual in common with the other men if he lives within the four walls of his own occupation and his vision is strictly limited thereby.

Professional Learning Not Culture.

That so large a part of general conversation in America relates to the weather, to politics, and to sport, is not so much because these things are intrinsically more interesting or variable than in other countries, as because they are among the few subjects that everyone is familiar with and can talk about. Professional learning is, no doubt, cultivating, but standing alone, it is not culture, for the reason that it is circumscribed and includes only a narow part of the stream of thought. For a lawyer to look through the microscope of a man of science increases his means of culture, for it broadens his ideas by revealing to his sight things before unknown. But the scientific man who can see only through his microscope has a very restricted vision of the world; and the same thing is true of every pursuit when restricted to its own limited field. When Charles Darwin said that in his later life he lost interest in almost everything except the pursuit of his own scientific studies, he stated that he was losing his sense of culture; and unless the loss promoted in some way his great work it was a misfortune.

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This essay deals not so much with culture as with the basis for culture that can be laid by a college or university, for culture, like all education, must continue through life. All we can do as teachers is to lay the best foundation for it that we can, and the upshot of the argument here presented is comprised in the old adage that the true basis for culture is to know a little of everything and everything of something. While we may admit that this is the object to be sought, sharp differences of opinion exist, and will remain, in regard to the means of attaining it. One question thrusts itself prominently forward: every man who is to study a profession must, if he is serious, master that subject well; why, then, it may be asked, should he not devote his previous college course wholly to getting as wide an acquaintance with as many subjects as possible, and leave his thorough knowledge of one field to his professional training? The answer is obvious to anyone who has had practical experience. The mind that deals only with elementary work in many subjects rarely gets the vigorous training needed to acquire a firm grasp of any of them. The smatterer on leaving college is a smatterer. He has never learned anything thoroughly, and although he may do so later, his subsequent training will hardly relate backwards to illumine and deepen his knowledge of subjects that was superficial when he acquired it. If the best result is to be obtained, the thorough study of one subject must be contemporaneous with the diversified study of others, and radiate light into them.

True Place of Professional Study.

Another question of a diametrically opposite tendency presents itself no less forcibly: why should not the professional study accompany the getting of an acquaintance with many other subjects, so that both go along together, the professional training supplying the backbone of the college curriculum? This is a much more subtle, if not a more difficult, question, and it is one that we must actually face, because it involves a strong existing tendency among American colleges. Again the answer to it is found only in practical experience. Professional study leading to a man's career in life is, and ought to be, almost passionately absorbing in comparison with other subjects pursued at the same time. These are apt to be regarded as of lesser importance as outlying parts of the curriculum of the school somewhat arbitrarily forced upon the student, and not of direct value commensurate with the things needed in professional life. It is well-nigh impossible, for example, to persuade a student of law, medicine, or engineering that literature is for him a serious matter, on a par with his technical work. General subjects are, therefore, likely to be neglected or treated lightly when studied in a school primarily professional. When, on the other hand, professional courses are introduced into a college curriculum, they are apt to suffer, not, indeed, as compared with the general subjects, but as compared with what can be accomplished in a school wholly devoted to preparation for a career. It is difficult in a college, with its alluring extra-curriculum activities, to create the strong professional atmosphere that promotes the best technical training.

For men, therefore, who can give the time there is a distinct advantage in pursuing their general studies before the professional ones. In short, there is much to be said for separating the work of college and professional schools. It follows also that the course in the college ought to cover a number of different subjects, together with a somewhat thorough study of one among them. What that one should be will vary with the personal aptitude of the student. In my own opinion, it is better, as a general rule, that it should not be too closely akin to the subject which will engross attention in the chief occupation of life; because any direct professional knowledge that can be obtained in college is trifling compared with what can be acquired in a far shorter period in a professional school, and the attempt to obtain it crowds out some other subject that will probably never be studied at a later time.

What Culture Implies.

This is not the time to review the methods of education in foreign countries. To be successful, any system must be consistent with itself, and it is unsafe to graft a foreign limb into a root unadapted to sustain it. So far as culture is concerned, our problem is to develop, in harmony with our own institutions, a type of education that will cause young people to enjoy the things the world has agreed are beautiful, to be interested in the knowledge mankind has found valuable, and to comprehend the principles the race has accepted as true. This is culture, and to impart it is a function of the American college.

We are sometimes told that after youths are emancipated from the rigid discipline of the school master, they cannot be made to take very seriously any studies which do not have a manifest bearing on their career in life. But if it be true that they cannot be led to work hard in an earnest effort to understand the knowledge slowly wrought out, and the civilization painfully achieved by man upon this planet, then our colleges do not deserve to survive and will certainly die