Fact and Comment

"If a young man is to make any real progress," a distinguished executive recently remarked, "he must either have a boss who is a brute, or be the slave to an idea which bosses him like a brute." Thus in a few words is stated the be-all and end-all of the disciplinarian's creed. It was something of this dogma which stood behind Dean Randall's remarkably outspoken address made recently to the alumni of Brown University. "Where Colleges Fail to Educate" was the subject which he chose, and it gave him a dozen opportunities to point the failures of our educational system. "Colleges lay too little stress upon punctuality and thoroughness in the performance of required work"; "young men should be subjected to a much more thorough and comprehensive examination"; "colleges do little toward the education of students in etiquette"--such are the leading points in the arraignment. So far so good. Discouraged by the shiftlessness and mental ineffectiveness of American undergraduates, the dean yet finds fault not so much with the students as with the administration of our colleges. The student needs a deal of improvement, he makes it plain, but he cannot be expected entirely to regenerate himself while the system remains poor.

Dean Randall then passes to condemnation of the too-prominent position which athletics hold in our colleges, and counsels that they should be speedily reduced from their high estate. As a disciplinarian he could have made more effective attack upon athletics by praising them. Don't they teach our students punctuality? No man is ever twice late in reporting for football practice. Don't they teach thoroughness? No athlete who neglects the work required of him can win the success which he covets. Hence few neglect it. On the athletic field students are given complete and thorough examination; in all our better institutions the etiquette of the game is scrupulously observed. In short, each of Dean Randall's desires for the better training of students is realized on the athletic field in so far as it there can be. The disciplinarian's ideal of slavery either to a brute as a boss (many of our athletic coaches cultivate brutishness), or to an ideal that they must win, is present in athletics.

So we say the dean could more effectively attack athletics by praising them, by plainly recognizing that the natural interest of undergraduates in their bodies is fostered by a system superior to that of the classroom in its attempts to train their minds. Surely athletics must be reduced to a position of less importance in our colleges; there is no end which we desire more. But this end will not be accomplished by mere regulative and hostile legislation on the part of our faculties. Such regulation usually serves only to widen the gap between students and teachers and to give the undergraduates the sense that they are being "balked." By flatly recognizing that athletics are run on a system often, superior to the discipline of the college, by studying their technic, and applying it to their own methods, our faculties could more easily oust athletics from their present absurd position of primary importance. Admit the disciplinarian's point of view, and you admit that young men can only progress under very hard taskmasters or as slaves on the athletic field to a physical, in the classroom to a mental, ideal. This ideal our colleges must make clear and tempting to the minds of their students. And now we come to the weakness of disciplinarians--that it is not they at all but rather the idealists who are truly able to inculcate ideals, to tempt men, old or young, toward the shining vision of liberated intelligence which is the goal of all real education.-- Boston Transcript.