A DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLE

Scholarship in this country is in disrepute. It is a commonplace that Americans, although they go to extremes in their adulation of education in the abstract, have contempt or condescending toleration for really educated men. If this contempt is less than it was among the general public or if in the colleges high scholarship among students wins more respect than it did ten years ago, the modification of public opinion has by no means been decisive.

Even some educators have a persistent mistrust of academic work as a main college pursuit, as a sufficient and dominating undergraduate discipline. They are, perhaps not always consciously, afraid that "the native hue of resolution" will be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Such an attitude in the world at large is unfortunate; among educators it is inexcusable.

The facts about study in American universities justify to some extent the disrespect felt for certain types of research. But nothing could be more dishonest intellectually or more fatal to the whole spirit of university work than to confuse pedantic and largely fruitless study with scholarship at its best. That would be as unreasonable as the tendency to disparage the art of politics in its ideal Platonic sense because of the unprincipled machinations of Tammany Hall. The real meaning of scholarship is simply careful and thorough rather than slipshod and emotional thinking. The term is too often applied to work of a kind which is an extreme parody of true scholarship.

When public opinion is at fault, as it is in regard to the value of real scholarship, specific remedies can have little effect, and their effect must be very slow. The millennium in education, as in polities, will not be fathered by a formula. But that does not mean that the actual situation has to be accepted with a passive fatalism.

What can the college "do about it"? A few actual administrative measures which might help will be suggested in this column during the next few weeks. It must be recognized that the whole question is essentially one of the spirit which pervades the university community. But at least one basic guiding principle for the colleges can be asserted: the necessity of guaranteeing that academic honors represent genuine intellectual achievement, and neither superficial brilliance nor uncomprehending industry. In failing to follow that principle uncompromisingly any university fails in its obligation to the community and to the honor of learning.