The Transmission of Learning Through the University

WE are beginning to perceive that the modern view of the origin of man is greatly to affect our understanding as to his true place in this world. So long as we looked upon ourselves and our fellow-beings as creatures placed upon the earth by some process other than that of natural law, it did not seem worth while to seek in the realms of nature any counsel as to the conduct of life. It is one of the most admirable and distinguishing features of our time that it has given us a new insight into the relations of man with the nature which is about him, and thereby has brought into his command new means of inquiry, and has opened vast perspectives of knowledge of which the men of other days never dreamed. We of this generation recognize a bondage, or better an alliance, with the past, which gives new understandings and makes new paths of duty clear. Nowhere else is this so evident as in the information which we have gained as to the relations of mankind to the lower life.

From this enchainment of our being with that of the lower creatures of the past, this fact to be accepted and reconciled to our thought and action, must date a new period in human affairs. Henceforth we have to adapt our conduct not only, as our forefathers did, to the commands of religion and the behests of ordinary social law, but also to the guiding truths of that science which shows us how we have struggled through the wildernesses of the ages from the inconceivably remote time when our being came forth out of the earth and began its long upward way. Beholding ourselves here as the result of immemorial order, we have to look over the stages of our advancement to gather the important lessons of the new revelation. We are to see in what ways we can apply these teachings, so that we may with our own reason continue the development which has led us from the darkness into the light.

First among the many problems which the new dispensation of knowledge brings before us we may place that of the transmission of learning. It needs no argument to show that the immeasurably great task of handing down from generation to generation the ever-accumulating store of valuable experience imposes a heavy burden upon the men of our time, a burden which increases with each successive age. The only way in which we can hope to accomplish this work in a satisfactory manner is by studying its nature, guiding ourselves in the inquiry by the history of the processes of transmission from the beginning to the present day. In this undertaking we cannot limit ourselves to the human period ; we must endeavor to survey the records of the earlier time when life was in its lower stages, slowly yet surely making ready for its position in man. There we shall find much to instruct and guide our efforts.

In the lowest states of organization in nature, in such aggregations as the molecules, the crystals, and the celestial spheres, we find structures of great variety and much complication, with many resemblances, both in form and function, to organic species. We readily note, however, that these primitive bodies differ from those forms which we properly term organic in that they acquire from their contact with the world about them nothing which they can hand on to their successors. So far as we can discern, they remain in their unchanged primitive forms through all space and time. The molecules and the crystals of quartz formed in the earliest ages of the earth are like those produced to-day ; they are probably the same in the remotest stellar sphere in which the physical conditions permit of their formation.

We easily see that it is otherwise with the organic creations. Their essential peculiarity, separating them by an infinite difference from the lower realm, consists in these facts: they manage to adjust themselves to their environment; they fit the changing conditions of the world about them ; they learn from the events of life, and hand on the ever-increasing store of experience to their successors. Unlike the individualities of the mineral kingdom, these truly living species are never in successive generations the same. While successful, they are normally ever advancing ; when unfortunate, they swiftly decline ; success and failure are alike determined by the measure in which they profit from the experience the individuals have received from their ancestors or have themselves acquired. We also note that almost at the outset of the organic series the life of the individual form is restricted ; it is here but for a brief time ; it develops in the manner and degree determined by its inheritances; it gives birth to its progeny, and passes quickly from the vital stage. The institution of successive and ordered birth and death in many distinct groups of animals and plants shows clearly that the Power which determines the order of nature, and which has lifted the scale of being upward to ourselves, finds the succession of generations a fit element in the plan. With each stage in the advance, the limitation of the time of existence, the establishment of the time of death, becomes more definite, until, in the higher creatures, the period is fixed within a narrow range.

This institution of death is apparently made in order that the species may have the advantages arising from the process of selection, which can operate only by the rapid presentation of successive individuals to the stern election which chooses the fit to live, and the unfit to die. There can be no doubt that the advance of the organic groups has intimately and absolutely depended on this order of nature which allows each individual but a momentary dwelling on earth. At the same time, as we readily see, the interruption of death tends exceedingly to complicate the task of handing on through each form the inheritances and acquisitions of its progenitors. These difficulties are met by an almost infinite number of contrivances, of which we can note the nature only in the most general way. This array of ingenuities constitutes a distinct world, in which the observant naturalist may spend a lifetime of study, and still feel himself an essentially ignorant inquirer.

In the lower forms of animals and plants, the forefathers give to their offspring the share of inheritable gains by storing — we know not how— the transmissible qualities in the spore, bud, or germ. At this stage in the development of the generational system, the parent gives but the beginnings of life, the tendencies which lead towards certain shapes and functions. This is sufficient to guide the young only a little way on their career. At a higher level, we find the egg or seed containing a considerable store of nutriment derived from the parent; this may serve to maintain the young creature for a longer period of growth, and thus permit it to attain a higher plane of structure. In our birds, this provision of food contained in the egg may amount in weight to as much as one fifth of the mother’s body. By this provision, the chick is enabled, during the period when it is within the shell, to advance from the simple state of the germ to a condition of high organization. As we advance in the organic series to the creatures which give milk, we find yet more complicated and efficient ways by which the parents give physical sustenance to their young, and so lead them far onward in their bodily growth. An inspection of the vegetable kingdom shows us a similar advance in the means whereby each generation, in its prime, devotes its strength to the duty of helping the offspring to win the difficult way from birth to the adult or perfected condition of the body.

But in the animal realm the bodily contrivances by which the parents endeavor to help the offspring are surpassed by the intellectual. As soon as creatures attain to any share of intelligence, they begin in most varied ways to care for their young ; in fact, their minds may be said to develop most distinctly on the side of parental care. By artfully constructed nests, by a thousand diverse attentions to the shelter, sustenance, and protection of their progeny, they lead them past the dangers which assail all weak forms, and start them fairly in the race of life. In some cases these contrivances are most singular, as in the instance of the mud wasps, which build a cell of clay, and deposit in it first a collection of spiders, each of which has been benumbed, but not killed, by stinging, and then the eggs; the whole being so managed that the young wasps feed upon the spiders, and find in them just enough food for their needs. Philosophical naturalists have speculated how this remarkable result is brought about, but their arguments have been quite without point. In such special instances, as in the larger field of the less conspicuous phenomena which beset the observer when he surveys the realm of instincts relating to the care of offspring, he cannot, except in rare cases, hope to unveil the details of the fact. He must, however, recognize the truth that by far the larger part of animal intelligence has arisen from and been devoted to this endless effort to convey to the young the goods which have been won by their predecessors of the species.

Although this effort to bridge the gap which death makes in the life of the kind is one of the most insistent in the lower forms of life, it attains in the higher races of our own species a dignity and importance which are unapproached elsewhere in this world. In these, as in other respects, man, though akin to the more ancient and lowlier creatures, so far transcends them that by the upward step he enters into a new realm. Among the inferior animals, there is rarely any considerable store of inheritances, material or intellectual, which can he handed on from the individuals in their prime to those who are to be their successors on the stage. They give their lives to the work, but they have, as compared with man, but little to hand on.

With the most primitive men, the problem of inheritance is nearly as simple as with the highest of their animal predecessors. They have little beside their habits and traditions which can be transmitted to their progeny. They have no material wealth; even the weapons and ornaments of the dead are usually buried or burned with the body. Yet even in this social station we find the beginning of that attention to the task of transmitting the learning which the generations have accumulated. Thus, among our American Indians as first seen by Europeans, there was practically no private wealth, and little trace of a system by which goods could be passed even from parent to child ; but the knowledge which they had gathered from their observation of nature, an extensive and curious body of information, was carefully treasured and skillfully handed down to the youths of the tribe. There were orders of priests whose duty it was to pass on the traditional customs, the songs and tales. There were societies, which in a way resembled our masonic and other fraternities, whose purpose it was to maintain and extend what we may well call the literature of the primitive people.

The evidence clearly shows that the first wealth was not that of goods, but that which depends upon and affords culture. It was indeed at a relatively late stage in the history of our kind that the devices for amassing and transmitting the ordinary forms of property were invented. The teacher, in the largest sense of the word, was the first of the classes to be separated from the mass of men for particular duties connected with the common store of the people. It is true that, as the keeper and transmitter of knowledge, he was also the priest. These two functions were naturally and for a long time associated. We may with truth say that only during the present century have they been to any extent separated among our own people. The merchant, the banker, the lawyer, those agents engaged in the problems arising from the transmission of tangible property, began to find their place in society when it took on the civilized form ; like the goods with which they deal, they are things of yesterday in the history of mankind.

From the simple beginnings of the task of transmitting learning by special teachers, the process has been steadfastly developing with the advance of civilization. For a time the greater part of the deliberately continued teaching was left to the priestly class, and was limited to the traditions of religion and the simple arts and learning, such as reading and the elements of number. With the creation of literature the tasks of the teacher began rapidly to increase, and with the advent of natural science his functions became vastly more extensive and important. In the Elizabethan age it was still possible for a learned man to attain something like mastery of all the arts and sciences. A youth could look to a single teacher for guidance from the beginnings of his education to the time when he entered the world fairly provided with the more valuable learning of the earlier ages. An 舠Admirable Crichton,” a man masterful in all the arts and sciences and skilled in all polite learning, was then possible, as he has not been in the later centuries.

To the naturalist, the devices which men have instinctively invented in order to accomplish the transmission of learning are most interesting, for the reason that they are framed on the same general principles as those by which the ever-increasing needs for the work of the organic body are provided for. In this natural process, we observe that the organism which in the lower state performs all its simple yet important functions indifferently with every portion of its frame, gradually, with its elevation in the scale of being, delegates these several duties to particular parts or organs which do their appointed tasks independently, yet under the control of the whole being. Thus, the senses, though acting individually, are associated in their work by the brain which presides over them : they are at once individual parts and members of a society in which they are coöperators. So, too, in that other and vaster organism, which we term the state, civilization, or humanity, according as we view it,— a structure which, though invisible and elusive, is still perfectly real, — the separate functions are united in their action, so that the whole has a true, and in a sense personal quality. Those who would conceive the nature of human society should carefully note that the process of evolution leads to ever more and more complicated orders of association. Organically, simple bodies are succeeded by those which are more complex, until, in these bodies of our own, to which we are so well accustomed that they seem commonplace affairs, we have a multitude of organs, each composed of innumerable cells ; and the poorest of us is a host greater than that mustered by Xerxes. This array of existences, which had to be assembled through the ages in order to constitute the human form, is marshaled and associated by our personality.

All this work of organizing the individual body, so that it may inherit from the past and transmit to the future, vast and in a way infinitely important as it is, appears to the philosophical inquirer to be a mere laying of foundations for the social edifice. This social body, in which the minds of men play a part like that of the cells in the human form, began likewise in exceeding simplicity, and is, day by day, before our eyes and in virtue of our deeds, swiftly ascending in the grades of structure. To those who attentively contemplate this majestic process of ongoing, the spectacle can be compared only to the sunrise, when each moment reveals new realms. The process is not one of growth by accretions, but rather like the swift unfolding of a structure which, like our springtime blossoms, has been shaped and stored away in other days. The social evolution is yet more peculiar in the fact that we may take a conscious part in the process ; not only may we behold actions in their spontaneous march, but we may contribute to the efficiency of the work, save it from the mischances which inevitably attend the rude, wasteful, and often cruel ways of nature, giving it the finish and accomplishment which characterize human art alone. This is the understanding to which man has been brought by our modern learning, a position more noble than our ancestors of a few generations ago could have conceived, and not yet pictured in its true nature by the noblest men of our own time.

In considering this vast spiritual body of our social system as it is taking shape before our eyes, and it may be somewhat from the labor of our hands, we readily observe that, like the earlier natural body, it has for its chief task the accumulation and transmission of inheritances. These slowly gathered transmittenda consist of very varied things. Perhaps first in order come the experiences in the conduct of life, those recognitions of moral truths which afford the subject matter of religion. Such are, by common consent, committed to that part of the organism termed the priesthood. Then we have the principles of action of man with man, which, though they may rest on the canons or rules of religion, need the interpretation and sanctions which are the keeping of jurists. Next in the hierarchy, where there is as yet no determined precedence, come the multifarious occupations of men relating to the care of the body, the production, preservation, and transmission of material resources. In a way assembling all these functions, and overarching them, is the work of the teacher.

At every step the question arises as to the means whereby the coming generation may be given possession of the accumulations of the past, and at the same time be made ready to secure its own advance. Whatever the branch of activity under consideration, this question is essentially pedagogic: it concerns the supreme art of transmitting learning. Whatever the practical application of the task may be in the crafts, the arts, or the sciences, the problem is mainly for the teacher. It is his duty to find how the learning may be gathered into a safe store, and delivered to the youths in such a manner that it may not only be passed on, but shall gather depth and elevation from generation to generation.

The first duty of those who have a share in this great task — a share, indeed, falls to every man and woman — is to perceive that the social organization, with its traditions, its motives, and its learning, though a structure of many parts, is, as before remarked, an organic whole. Its true significance can be understood only by those who look upon it, not as a thing of shreds and patches, as it is apt to appear on a hasty view, but as a structure like unto our own bodies in its complexity ; where the individual parts have their separate life, but where the true being arises from the association of their activities; where health and disease are alike to be found. Furthermore, it must be remembered that the social body, unlike the frames of those who compose it, is to a great extent determinable by the intelligence and the forethoughtful labor of the men and women who share the benefits it confers. Thus, while such societies are to a great extent spontaneous, and exist even in highly developed forms without the conscious care of their members, their best success, the elevation to which we may hope to see them attain, depends upon the intelligence and self - devotion of their citizens. Those who bear the responsibilities of teachers are particularly charged with the implantation of these motives in the social structure ; for it is only from the growth of such an understanding that we may hope to elevate human society to its highest attainable plane. Clearly, their most eminent task is to make men see the history of their present status, and their duty in the light of this understanding.

Cuming now to the special duties of those whose province it is to care for the immediate tasks connected with the transmission of learning, let us see what light the natural history of the matter casts upon the problem. The most important observation which the naturalist has to make is that the system by which this end is effected should be such as to convey to each member of the society enough of the motives of his kind to insure his thorough initiation into the brotherhood of man. It is of course obviously impossible, in any complicated social system such as our own, to transmit to each youth any considerable share of the traditions and motives which reside in it. Therefore a selection must be made ; some of the young men or women are to enter on particular employments, and need the learning of their special occupations, — a learning which would be useless to those of other callings. This system of division, already begun, must evidently go far. All the definite professions, such as law, medicine, engineering, the various employments where long training of eye and hand as well as skill of mind is required, will have to be provided for by a certain amount of special education. The main point is to attain this end in such a manner that the youth may not, in gaining his special training, be too far separated from the best traditions of his people.

The educator who considers his problems in the large way clearly sees that the important task is to put each student in possession of the motives of his kind in such a way that the transmission will have the most improving effect; he looks upon all specialization which demands or threatens to require the separation of the youth from the general current of cultivation as an evil ; he naturally seeks every means of accommodation by which the end of the specialist can be attained without diverting the student too far from the main tide of those influences which experience has shown to be uplifting. This view as to the need of general culture in education is by no means novel : it has found more or less expression in the writings of many of the great students of such questions ; it is distinctly indicated in the system of education which we have inherited ; it is indeed at the foundation of our plan of common school education, and finds its fullest expression in our greater universities.

So long as the store of culture remained in a form where it could be appropriated in something like its fullness by each seeker, the system of schooling which, from the time of the Greeks through successive advancements, culminated in the modern university, served the cause of education in a fairly complete way. The student who was so fortunate as to be destined to receive an extended training began his tasks with the theory that the first eighteen years or so of his life should be devoted to the acquisition of the large inheritances of knowledge, and that on this general foundation his special training of a professional nature should be made to rest: the lawyer, the clergyman, and the physician had in most cases the same preliminary education. With the recent advance of science and the development of the arts which depend upon the new learning, there has been a tendency to specialize the education of engineers, chemists, and the other men who deal with the new professions, so ordering their training that they are entirely separated from their brethren of other intellectual employments. This seems to me in its nature a mistake which every considerate educator should deplore.

The first, and as yet the most evident tendency to specialize our education, so that each profession may have the largest share of time for the training of those who seek to enter it, is seen in the establishment of technical schools, with their plan of work so arranged that their students seek no learning which does not more or less directly bear upon the craft they intend to pursue. These detached trade schools originated in Europe, where they were founded with the deliberate intention of separating the education of engineers from that deemed appropriate for the gentry or the men of the learned walks of life. The parting of the old and new educations clearly rests in the main upon the rather preposterous assumption that the modern or scientific arts are in a way less respectable or dignified than the ancient and more culture-breeding occupations, and in part upon the belief that the new employments require less well informed men than the old. Other and equally unfounded assumptions occasionally have a share in determining the separation of the schools of applied science from the established institutions of culture. Now and then it is urged that the spirit of the universities is disengaged from the practical affairs of men, so that the students in them fail to acquire that sense of duty and devotion to it which is demanded in the bread-winning occupations. Again, we hear that time and money, those elements of capital which have ever to be considered, are alike wanting in the case of our youths who are to take charge of the practical work of the world.

Separately stated, and taken without an understanding as to the place in the transmission of learning which, after many centuries of experience, has been assigned to universities, these arguments for the separation of mechanical and industrial education from the old culture seem plausible, but in a large analysis of the situation they are seen to be fallacious. No one who has come to understand the relation of the application of energy to our civilization can doubt that, in the world’s esteem, the engineer is soon to take the place of the military man, and that those who are to apply force in the peaceful occupations of the arts are to have a station coequal, at least, with that of the soldier who devotes his life to the ancient and destructive uses of power. Whatever of opprobrium may at first have pertained to mechanical tasks will disappear as their intellectual station comes to be recognized, as it needs must be. The notion that these modern occupations do not call for the same enlarging education that has been devoted to the old professions is likewise due to a misconception. It is necessary, indeed, that those who are engaged in the great industrial revolutions should understand the nature of those societies in which their work is to be done. We are surely right in demanding for them all the enlargement of perspective given by the training which is to prepare the theologian, the jurist, or the physician.

If it be in any measure true that our universities are, by their motives, separated from our economic life, and that they fail to inform their pupils concerning such important matters, it is because they do not have among their students and teachers a due number of those who are concerned with the modern callings. The claim should be, not for a plan which will still further separate these agents for the transmission of learning from the body of the people, but rather for measures which may remedy the defect, and make the universities effective in transmitting the new as they have been in handing down the ancient culture.

As for the claim that time and money cannot be spared for the education of men who are to devote themselves to engineering and mechanic arts, except within the limits of their immediate necessities, the argument is no stronger than it is when applied to those who are to enter on the old professions. Pushed to its legitimate conclusion, it would limit an extended education to youths of wealth and prospective leisure. It is, moreover, clear that, decade by decade, through the advance of the mechanic arts, our societies are able to devote more wealth to the enlargement of promising youths. This is no time to begin to pauperize our education. Least of all is it fit that its advantages should be denied that class of men to whom we look with confidence for an ever-increasing share of comfort and spiritual advantage to every citizen. It is evident that the foregoing considerations bring us to the problem as to the place and functions of the university in our modern life. Although the question is far too large to be treated adequately in this writing, there are certain general facts deserving of notice which may be briefly set forth. In the first place, it seems plain that this great business of handing down the intellectual capital of society must be lodged in some institution. It cannot safely be left to haphazard. At first, and through long experiment, essays were made in giving over this work to the churches; the result was failure. In the later time, which has indeed not yet passed away, an endeavor was made to confide these interests to civil governments, to states which had already quite enough to do in caring for other interests. It seems to me clear that if there is to be any headship, any source of direction, in our educative work, it must be found in the universities, the only institutions which have proved themselves in any way fit to discharge this duty.

If we look upon universities as institutions which are to maintain and guide the spirit which leads to the transmission of learning; if we expect from them accomplishment comparable to that of the churches in caring for religion, or of the state in guarding civil liberty, certain very grave responsibilities are seen to rest upon them. Their first duty is to provide all classes of men with a large share of those impulses and understandings which have controlled human progress. Their function is, so far as in them lies, to see that none go forth to the directing work of the world without some guiding sense of those motives which have inspired civilization. So far as the system of our universities hinders or does not favor this end, it should be reformed. If they are to guide in the transmission of learning, they must deal with the matter in a broad and inclusive way.

It seems to me that without determined plan, without, indeed, any conscious understanding of the conditions, our universities have already gone far on the way of preparing themselves to deal with the varied culture of our modern life. To take but one instance, chosen because of no favor, but for the reason that it alone is well known to me, I may set forth the steps by which Harvard University has pushed forward in the work of adapting the instruction which it gives to the needs of this country. For about a century and a half the requirements of the public seemed to be sufficiently met by the ancient college. The first enlargement led to the establishment of separate schools which met the needs of the ancient professions, divinity, medicine, and law. With the beginning of the present half century we note a further effort to adapt the system of instruction to the more differentiated state of public affairs. The Lawrence Scientific School was established, and in rapid succession schools of agriculture and horticulture, dentistry, and veterinary surgery were founded. A number of great establishments, having research for their primary object, and yet of teaching value, have grown up within the university. The Astronomical Observatory, the Arnold Arboretum, the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, and the Peabody Museum of American Ethnology and Archæology, as well as several other lesser laboratories of research, indicate something of the progress which has been made in adapting this institution to the needs of our society.

Of late years, the work of fitting the university system to the public need has in good part been accomplished through the enlargement effected in the Lawrence Scientific School. When first instituted, this school was scantily supported by laboratories and the other elements of plant demanded in its work. The creation and enlargement of these establishments have now made it possible for that school to provide departments in which the student may make himself fit for eight different occupations which demand a science training. This brief history of the enlargement and application of instruction in Harvard University is but an illustration of what has been going on in every important seat of culture in this country.

There are other ways in which our universities have gone forth towards the work of the world. So far as the elective systems of the University of Virginia and of Harvard College have been extended, they have enabled the student to combine his work of culture for its own sake with the preparation for a calling. It seems certain that we shall enter on the next century with a college system which will lead men towards rather than away from the paths of professional duties. The experience with elective work appears sufficient to show that culture in the best sense is not to be lost by this liberty which has been granted to peculiar capacities and needs. In the schools of science which have been established alongside of the colleges, a successful effort has been made to adapt the entrance requirements to the instruction given in the public high schools. As the elective system makes head in these secondary institutions of learning, the way will be opened by which the children of the people may pass directly to the undergraduate work of the universities.

It now appears that the conditions which led, in the greater number of our American institutions, to the grouping of professional schools around an original college, or seat of what has been termed pure culture, afford certain peculiar advantages. To the college proper we may assuredly look for the perpetuation of those ancient ideals of learning to which we need so far as possible to conform in all our advancement. Experience shows, in Harvard University at least, that we may trust to the dissemination of this spirit throughout the whole of a great establishment. Teachers and pupils alike acquire those enlarged views of education which we cannot hope to develop under any other conditions. In this spontaneous response of our universities to the demand which our American public make upon them we have the best possible evidence as to their fitness to assume a directing function, in the task of transmitting the body and Spirit of learning. It is clear that our people have been right in their curious affection for these establishments. They have, after the manner of free men, discerned something of the great work which these institutions were to do. In proportion as they see the task the more clearly, we may expect them to magnify this work.

N. S. Shaler.