What is the Duty of the College?

Among the public institutions that have been receiving the benefit of the critical spirit of this decade is the college. Radical organs fill their editorial pages with denunciations of "this stronghold of capitalism" and insist that American educators have given their freedom in exchange for pitiful salaries and are but "the tools of the ruling class." On the other hand, reactionaries are as loud in their accusations that the colleges are the strongholds of menacing economic theories and are "full of parlor-bolshevists."

Despite the wide divergence in their demands, the radical and the reactionary desire the same thing. They insist that the teacher become a propagandist and that the college become a school for a particular theory. Time was when such schools existed and students traveled from one to the other to get a universal point of view. They were the schools of Greece and of the middle Ages. We flatter ourselves that we have advanced in many thing, among them--education. But it is beside the point to question whether this is a better or worse system. The fact remains that the vast majority of students go to but one institution and expect to be informed on all the concepts that underlie our lives.

The duty, then, of the college and the teacher is clear. The one must consider itself among the foremost institutions of a genuine democracy--never of any class--and, as such, must radiate common sense and illuminate the truth of human relationships as formulated in our governmental programs. The other must consider himself a medium of knowledge to his students--never a propagandist--and, as such, much present all significant conceptions to his classes. In this way, and in this way only, can they do their part,--and a particularly important part it is, in building a safe and sane democracy and in stabilizing and perpetuating the abiding principles of free government.