Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/99

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ORGANIZATION OF A STATE UNIVERSITY
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than in the purely intellectual outcome. They should be trained teachers with the social point of view; that is, with a conception of truth as something that comes up out of the great social world and returns into the greater social world to make life more complete and worth while.

There should be no teaching of the younger members of the university by mere research men. The first contact of the freshman with the university should be with the broadest and sanest members of the faculty. That is to say, the faculty should be strong enough to be able to afford real teachers for the freshmen. There is more to be said with reference to the organization of the faculty and the university in general, but before proceeding to that a brief statement is necessary here about the student body.

The student body is, of course, the most important part of the university. The rest of the university exists for the sake of the student body. A university student body is always, under normal conditions, an inspiring body.

In turn, they should be constantly inspired. They should be so carefully looked over on their entrance to the university that the state may be perfectly assured that none is among them merely to waste time and squander the resources of the state and his own life.

And thus assured of their interests and their ability, the students should have some real share, some genuine control in the organization and life of the university. The university exists to minister to the growing life of the students. It should be used by them as a means to their education; and since education is a broadly social process, the university must recognize its broadly social meanings and organize itself, democratically, along all the lines that minister to, that support, that compel or nourish any element of democratic personality. The spirit of genuine cooperation and effectiveness should be apparent everywhere; and old-time aristocratic suspicions of the student body should be done away with. Real training for democratic living can come only through sharing real responsibility.

Let us now return to a more complete discussion of the organization of the university. The whole faculty, every member being present or accounted for, should come together daily for at least a week before the regular opening of the school term in the fall. Out of the incidental or special studies of the summer, the experiences in travel or investigation, or the broadening influences of reaction, every member of the faculty should have something valuable to suggest with reference to the growing problems of the institution and the necessary policies. He who has nothing to suggest as to policy should be regarded as only half a member of the faculty: teaching is not all of university life. Each member of the faculty should feel a share in the determination of