ART FOR ALL

"The Doom of the Arts College" is rather described than forecast by Herman G. James in the current New Republic. The educational problem does not lie, he says, in the elder colleges of the east. There tradition tends to preserve the atmosphere of learning, but the means of preservation, namely, limitation of enrollment, reduces the powers of these institutions to assist in solving the nationwide problem, that is, the struggle to stem the forces of vocational education before they completely efface the cultural features.

This problem the state universities face. And, if the numbers that attend them, the tendency to enlarge them, and the influence they have in educational experimentation all be taken into account, the fortunes of education in America are inextricably bound up with their methods. Three factors continues Mr. James, are stripping them of their cultural character. The transference, in some places, of the last two years of the normal four year course to graduate work, leaves only two years for more general study. The attempts of professional departments to see that students entering their courses have had proper previous training lead to pre-medical and pre-engineering courses and deprive even the first two years of college of their cultural attributes. Still another device, the junior college, to all intents and purposes a two year continuance of the high school course, offers students the temptation not to try to get any general knowledge above high school grade from any source. From Mr Jones' representation, public education is directed to near-sighted practical goals.

Two questions come to the mind of a commentator. The first asks who is responsible for the trend. One answer is that the attempt to educate men regardless of capabilities leads naturally to the adoption of quickly attainable objectives, that administrators of public systems are well aware of this despair of convincing the generality of people that the indeterminate paths of learning are worth travelling, and therefore succumb, that politicians aid and abet all moves to make education practical because most electors are practical-minded.

The second question is of a more profitable sort. It is, what evil will result from this advance of practical education? or was it not folly in the beginning to set up state colleges upon the same bases and with the same objects as private colleges? Public institutions, even though practical, may well carry the burden of vindicating scientific knowledge and careful study as an approach to everyday professional and industrial tasks. And private institutions may retain the task they have long ago assumed and steadily followed, that of proving to those who will attend the proof, that the knowledge of one thing in its truest light involves knowing many things, and may retain, as its province likewise, the duty of giving asylum to the speculative mind and a more protecting harbor than even highly experimental industries can give to the scientific mind in its most abstract researches.

It is well to add that the separation can never, ought never, to be complete, that, moreover, private institutions in certain circumstances will be motivated much as the run of public ones are and that old and established state universities may serve speculative ends more fully than many a privately endowed one. It is certain, however, that all needs will be served; and that it is no a bad thing to see that there are places where each and everyone can best be served.