The New University 9781487579586

Citation preview

THE NEW UNIVERSITY

THE NEW UNIVERSITY

by Murray G. Ross UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Copyright, Canada, 1961, by University of Toronto Press Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018 ISBN 978-1-4875-8073-5 (paper)

Foreword by THE HONOURABLE ROBERT H. WINTERS Chairman of the Board of Governors York University

When the Board of Governors of York University first met late in 1959 with our newly apPointed President, Dr. Murray G. Ross, all of us knew we were embarking on an exciting adventure. Each of us had a more or less clearly denned concept of the type of university we wished York to be. As Board members we were concerned with the imPortant problems of providing accommodation, facilities, and money, but it was not until we pooled all our views and impressions and drew upon Dr. Ross's clearly defined concepts that the course for York began really to be charted. The careful reader will 6.nd in the following pages precise definition of how the concept is being translated into reality. Dr. Ross had been the Vice-President of the University of Toronto before becoming President of York. Our new enterprise from the outset has enjoyed the warm co-operation of the University of Toronto, but it was not part of their ambition or ours that we emulate exactly their academic way. Their concern and ours was that we should develop a university of quality and that we be experimental

vi

Foreword

in dealing with those many problems that have confronted all universities throughout the centuries. This approach harmonized splendidly with Dr. Ross's aims and aspirations for York University. The following pages provide almost a blueprint of the master-plan, and the thinking behind it, which York will follow or has already implemented. Most of this material was given in the form of speeches and was, therefore, related to the specific audience before which it was delivered, or reflects the stage of our development at the time, but in its totality there emerges a vision of what we wish York to become, to serve its students and our society ably and well. Implicit, too, is the fine mind of the speaker upon whose leadership will depend so much of the effectiveness of York as a place of scholarship, teaching and research. All of us associated with York University have become inspired by the vision of creating not only a new, but also a better, institution of learning. If in some areas we are exploring new pathways for Canada in university education, the President has the assurance that it will not be a lonely journey, for he has the wholehearted support of his Board of Governors. Dr. Ross says the Board of Governors "must see, more clearly than most, the role of the university in modem society, the need for its support, the steps to be taken to allow it to fulfil its destiny." When the reader has finished this book, I believe he will sense some of the excitement of the high venture towards that destiny-of establishing a university with characteristics and a character of its own. I need only add that members of the Board of Governors of York University join with Dr. Ross, its President, in accepting the challenge to build a university of practical value to contemporary life and of enduring worth to society.

Preface

The ideas contained in this little book relate principally to my hopes for York University. There is, however, some speculation about education in general and about universities in particular. This may seem to offer something less than a coherent whole; but universities are not ( or should not be) static institutions. Rather should they have some firm ideas about philosophy and direction while at the same time exploring and studying many other possibilities that might alter present thought and practice. It is useful to have before one not merely the requirements of the moment but a range of ideas which a degree of perspective always demands. The precise shape and future of York University is dependent upon many factors, the most important of which may well be our capacity to secure sufficient agreement among Board, faculty, and students to launch and sustain a venture in higher education that is not merely new but is fresh and experimental. Already it is clear that pressures to follow traditional academic trails will come not only from the outside but from within the University. This is perhaps natural, for most of us have ourselves followed established academic paths, and deviation from them is not comfortable. Nonetheless, I am hopeful that what will

viii

Preface

emerge from York's planning will be a firm, clear, and exciting programme. Much of this book originated in the form of speeches. My own background in writing has been in preparing articles, papers for societies, and chapters for books, and I do not readily write a speech or an address. The latter, it seems to me, must inevitably deal lightly with ideas. There is not time for sustained argument, for the full exposition of any subtle point, for dealing adequately with the ramifications or implications of the idea being discussed. This book must be seen, therefore, less as a fully developed and properly documented thesis than as a series of loosely related ideas pertaining to the whole field of education. A good deal is left, as perhaps it should be, to the reader's own capacity for imagination and speculation. The chapters represent papers or speeches prepared for quite different audiences. Chapter I is a summary of several papers prepared for the Board of Governors of York University, which were also the basis of addresses to several community groups. Chapter II began as an address to the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto; Chapter III is a compilation of addresses to the Empire Club of Toronto and to audiences of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's national and international networks; Chapter IV is taken in large part from my Installation Address; Chapter V is from an address given in Toronto to the Institute of Ethics of Beth Tzedec Congregation; and Chapter VI is from an address given to the Vancouver Institute at the University of British Columbia. Chapters VII and VIII represent, respectively, my opening address to the first class of students at York University and the Convocation Address to students at Acadia University in 1960. I cannot, of course, thank all those whose ideas, and in some cases, phrases, have found a place in these chapters.

Preface

ix

Suffice it to say, one never writes independently, but always in interaction with one's colleagues in the world of scholarship. I am particularly grateful, however, to Professor John R. Seeley for reading, and commenting on, many of these speeches in their original form, and to Mrs. J. L. Atkins for editing and typing the manuscript.

M.G.R. November 7, 1961

Contents

FOREWORD

V

vii

PREFACE

1

PART I: TO TIIE SOCIETY

context and principles

1.

DEVELOPMENT:

2.

CRITERIA:

marks of a good university

19

3.

VEHICLE:

a liberal and general education

30

4.

AIM:

5.

PROCESS:

education as active ethics

55

6.

AGENCY:

quantity and quality

73

human qualities and a humane world

PART II: TO THE STUDENTS

right beginnings

7.

HAILI

8.

FAREWELL!

right endings

3

42

89 91 102

PART I: TO THE SOCIETY

1. DEVELOPMENT

context and principles

In any society the best of its new institutions are a response to subtle needs, not easily recognized by the public. Institutions that are developed merely to meet popular needs are often superficial in character, and do little more than expand existing services. The most striking good new institution in recent Canadian history, the Stratford Shakespearean theatre, is less the product of popular demand than the work of imaginative people who were aware of deficiencies in the cultural life of Canada, who gave impetus to a fresh and original organization, and who brought something new and valuable into existence. Hollywood studios and some television stations, in contrast, both create and respond to the most easily recognized public taste and demand; they fall into a stereotyped and repetitious pattern which dulls and stultifies the mind. York University aims to be, rather, one of the better new institutions. The pressures which led to its mere foundation were obvious to all. But to avoid mediocrity, or duplication of the accepted form of an encrusted university, it was necessary to discover more refined and subtle needs, which

4

The New University

required fresh thinking about university aims, organization and development. Obvious and pressing needs could not be overlooked, but less obvious ones had to be considered. Much of what is said hereafter is a report on the effort of myself and my colleagues to define the dual task of York University: to supply the obvious need for places for an increasing number of university students, but to do so in a manner that is both creative and related to more elusive needs in higher education. What made the creation of a new university in Toronto a live issue was the forecast that far more university places would be required there in the immediate future than could possibly be provided by established universities. Nowhere in Canada would the "pressure of numbers," at the university level, be greater than in Ontario; and nowhere in Ontario would the likely demand for university places be greater than in Metropolitan Toronto. Morover, in 1959, Toronto was the only city of its size in North America which had only one university. As such, Toronto was obviously ill equipped to meet the anticipated need for university places. A new university was essential. Future demand for university places was set forth in 1956 in the Submission of the Province of Ontario to the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects. The University of Toronto had traditionally accommodated about half of the university population in Ontario, but since it had stated, as a matter of policy, that it did not intend to take more than 24,000 students, the size of the future constituency of a second university could readily be calculated. The accompanying table provides such a calculation. The estimates of the Provincial Government were based on the assumption that an increasing percentage of the "youth population" (18 to 21 years of age) would attend

Development

5

UNIVERSITY PLACES REQUIRED IN ONTARIO AND IN TORONTO

In Ontario In Toronto University of Toronto will take Other places required in the Toronto area

1960

1965

1970

1975

28,000 14,000

42,700 21,350

61,600 30,800

87,000 43,500

14,000

21,350

24,000

24,000

6,800

19,500

university. The size of the native-born youth population can be calculated fairly accurately, since those who will be youth in 1975 are already born. To this must be added an estimate of the number of immigrants to the Province, and the result will be the total youth population. Thus, one of the two basic figures in the estimate of additional university places needed is known within a narrow margin of error. The other variable is the estimated percentage of youth who will want to attend university. The Government's projection assumes that, in the next fifteen years, this percentage will increase from approximately 9 per cent in 1960 to 15 per cent in 1975. 1 The projected increase to 15 per cent of youth in Ontario in university by 1975 is a conservative estimate indeed, if the situation in the United States, where approximately 30 per cent of the youth 1 The reason for projecting this increase is twofold. First, the percentage of youth going to university has increased steadily, in spite of wars and depressions, over the past fifty years. In 1921, the percentage of youth in Ontario attending university was 4.6, and this had grown to 9.3 by 1961. There is little to suggest that this steady trend will (or can) be reversed. Second, it is assumed that the trend in Canada will follow that in the United States, where approximately 30 per cent of the youth population now attend college or university. In the United States, there is widespread acceptance of the idea that all who complete high school should have the opportunity of attending college or university. The status in society and occupation which accrues with a university education has also had a profound influence on the number of students wishing to continue their education. These are powerful forces which many expect will increase the percentage of the university population in the United States well beyond its present mark.

6

The New University

population is in college or university, is taken into consideration. Such a proportion of youth in university is not likely to be duplicated here in the immediate future. But, barring serious disruption in national or world conditions, the expectation that close to 15 per cent of the youth population in Canada's most prosperous province should, and will, be in university in 1975 seems reasonable and proper. If so, close to 20,000 additional university places must be provided in Metropolitan Toronto. Given the University of Toronto's self-restriction of numbers, it follows that a second-or even a third-university in this area must be brought into full operation within a very short period of time. The numbers may well be even larger. I do not believe that the preceding estimates have taken adequate account of a third factor: the length of time students will spend in university. A first university degree is now not as adequate a preparation for life as it was in the less specialized society of several decades ago. The result of this will be that an increasing percentage of university students will proceed to graduate work and a second or third degree. Already the universities are preparing for this eventuality. The number of universities in Canada offering graduate degrees has increased from 17 in 1944-1945 to 28 in 19581959; the number of students seeking graduate degrees at the University of Toronto in 1960-1961 was 15 per cent greater than in the previous year. It is highly probable that this trend will continue, and that an increasing number of students will be in university for six- to eight-year periods. 2 2The requirement for university teachers in the future is merely one factor that will encourage graduate study. About 350 Doctors of Philosophy now graduate from Canadian universities each year, but approximately 1,700 new university teachers will be needed each year in the next decade.

Development

7

It is not only this possibility that adds to the conviction of many that the government projections quoted above may be too conservative. Indeed, its 1956 estimate of enrolment for 1960-1961 is approximately 3,000 below the actual figure, and this has further stirred the fears of those who already believe that Ontario is ill equipped to deal with the surge of students who will seek admission to its universities in the future. The obvious need, then, is to care for 20,000 students, and this requires a new, large multi-faculty university in Metropolitan Toronto. Without denying the urgency of this need, nor our obligation to meet it, we at York University have resisted the temptation only to do the obvious, to serve as an overHow station for other universities, to become simply "another university." We have been concerned as well with other, less evident, needs: with the very special opportunities to look afresh at students, society, and education, and to break from encrusted tradition where necessary and desirable. It was not impossible, we felt, for us to make "a question of quantity a problem of quality." Investigation confirmed our initial belief that less obvious needs did exist, and that some of these were, indeed, as critical as those relating to size and to the provision of university places. The three most important and urgent additional tasks that emerged from our investigation and our speculation seemed to be: the development of a curriculum relevant to the world of today and tomorrow; the development of a new type of evening college; and the institution of a fine, small residential college. In somewhat more detail, the needs are as follows: 1. THE CURRICULUM. The traditional curriculum in Canada follows the English pattern, which favours early

8

The New University

specialization. The student, on leaving high school, generally moves immediately (in his first year of university) either into a professional course, such as engineering, pharmacy, or dentistry, or into an "Honours" programme, in which he specializes in a subject such as history, psychology, or chemistry. Often in these specialized courses the student is limited to his field of study. For example, in some universities, if he takes an Honour Science course, he may not be permitted to take a course in philosophy. If he takes an Honour Philosophy course, he may not be permitted to take a course in science. The General Course (in which he may take both science and philosophy) usually has less status in the university, often attracts less able students, and may have less enthusiastic teachers. The repetition of the English pattern in Canada is inappropriate in a social situation radically unlike the English one, and in a university unlike the older English universities. The latter emphasize their residential colleges, where students "educate each other" in an intellectual climate which encourages broad interests and wide reading. In Canada, in contrast, most students at larger universities commute daily from their homes; they spend fewer hours with fellow students, or at the university, than do students in residence; and partly as a consequence of this there is nothing like the broad and stimulating intellectual climate on the Canadian campus that one finds in such universities as Oxford or Cambridge. Allowing for exceptions, the pressure on the Canadian student, particularly in the professional faculties, but often in the Honours programme as well, is to concentrate on the task in hand, to master his specialization at the expense of all else. When I spoke recently to a student who had graduated with high honours in a professional faculty at a large Canadian university, he told me: "I haven't read

Development

9

a newspaper or a magazine for four years. It has been a period of great concentration for me." This young man may be unusual, but I fear not as unusual as most university men would like to think. Such a programme may do for some students, but it obviously will not do for all. In the Canadian context, it is essential to formalize in class and course work some of the broadening and civilizing influences which the residential colleges of Great Britain provide in much more informal fashion. It is clear to us that there is a place for a university in Canada that specializes in general and liberal education. Those who wish such an education need and want an opportunity to study a broad range of subject-matter. Such an experience must be especially designed to provide an understanding of the basic academic disciplines. The context in which the understanding is to occur must encourage imaginative consideration of the problems of modem man as they appear in the light of the great civilizing ideas and influences of the past. This is not more than the great universities of the United States such as Harvard, Yale, or Chicago are seeking to do; and, indeed, it is not more than is now being attempted by several new British universities-with the help, it should be noted, of men from Oxford and Cambridge. There is an opportunity here in Canada for a new university not simply to repeat the traditional curriculum drawn from the Britain of a century or more ago. There is a challenge to develop a curriculum which, while sensitive to the best recent experience of the great universities of the world, is more relevant to the day and the milieu in which students who follow it, live. 2. THE RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE. The inevitable trend in Canada today is towards large universites in which a decreasing propartion of students live in residence. As will be suggested in a later chapter, large universities have

10

The New University

many advantages, and in the future these advantages may multiply as the best scholars, libraries, and research facilities become concentrated in these vast centres of learning. But there is all the more need to develop also a few small institutions which will stand out against what must surely become the mass production of graduates. Such an institution will protect the values of individuality and personal instruction, will nourish the advantages of mature and civilized conversation and debate. This can best be done in a small residential college attached to a large university. Such a small college, a separate entity, requires a separate campus so that it may be protected from the overpowering influence of the mass university. But the college must also have association with a large university, for only so, probably, can it retain on its faculty enough scholars of great repute. Such men need access to the libraries, graduate students, and colleagues which only a large university can provide. A college related to a large university could provide such resources. Policy-makers at York University, from its inception, had in mind a small residential college which would attract some of the brightest students in Canada to its halls. Such a college would give to its students an intimate educational experience of a kind which unfortunately is becoming increasingly rare in North America. It may be thought that such a college is suitable only for an intellectual elite. I cannot see that this is a problem. "Equality of opportunity" surely does not mean the same opportunity for all. Harvard and Princeton have produced a far higher proportion of leaders than the size of their enrolment would seem to promise. The reason, as in the case of Oxford and Cambridge, is that specially talented youth have been selected for admission, and have been provided with a unique, if expensive, education.

Development

11

With the exception of a few small residential colleges in the Maritime Provinces,8 Canada does not have a university with the record of these great universities in other countries. A small residential college at York University may well aspire to a similar role. 3. THE EVENING COLLEGE. One of the most interesting phenomena in higher education in recent years is the remarkable rise in the enrolment of adults in the evening divisions of universities in Canada and the United States. Many universities in urban centres now have more students working for a degree in evening college than they do in their day programme. This trend is surely to be encouraged in a democracy, since it means that thousands of citizens who did not complete their formal education are able to revive their habits of study and thereby increase the number of university-trained persons in the community. Further, many of these adults are excellent students with a sense of purpose and a determination to work. Peter Drucker says, "I personally consider them the most worthwhile students and the ones with the strongest and best motivation." Any movement which makes it possible for such adult students to increase their understanding of themselves, the society of which they are members, and the world in which they live, is of importance to our society. Study of this phase of higher education suggested two major reasons for the establishment of a new evening college in Metropolitan Toronto. One reason relates to the number of students seeking in the evening a programme leading to a degree ( what is called an "evening-degree programme"); and the second relates to the kind of curriculum 3Without the resources about which I have spoken, even these will have difficulty maintaining the quality of their staff and students in the future.

12

The New University

and other opportunities required by students in an evening programme. In Ontario, at the present time, most universities in urban centres provide evening-degree programmes. The following figures (taken from a Study of Enrolment at the University of Toronto by G. de B. Robinson) indicate the number of evening students in each university and the percentage of enrolment in the evening-degree courses compared with the enrolment in the day-degree courses:

University

Assumption Carleton McMaster Ottawa Queen's Western Toronto

No. of eveningdegree students

1,040 900 2,171 2,640 1,534 1,751 2,460

Evening-degree students as a percentage of day-degree students

100% 105 115

102 54

48

19

Relative to the size of the day-time programme, the University of Toronto has the smallest percentage of students enrolled in its evening-degree programme. This is owing in part to the large number of non-degree courses it offers (for there are almost 18,000 students in its evening programme) but it may be owing also to a certain reluctance on the part of that university to become further involved in evening-degree programmes. Numbers alone, therefore, justify providing more places for evening-degree students. A second reason for initiating an evening-degree programme is that, in my view, the prevailing pattern in university evening programmes in Canada is quite inadequate. In most universities in Canada the evening-degree programme is almost identical with the day programme, which is developed to meet the needs of 17- and 18-year-old high-

Development

13

school graduates. What is needed, surely, in the evening college is a specially prepared programme of study, no less demanding in its discipline than the day programme, but specifically related to the interests and capacities of the adult. An adaptation for an evening college of the educational philosophy of York University, which emphasizes general and liberal education, would, I believe, be far more relevant to the present world and to the needs of adults in it than would be the mere repeating of the day programme in the evening. Another undesirable aspect of most evening programmes in Canadian universities is that the students in such programmes are, in other ways, treated far less adequately than day-time students. It is not, indeed, too much to suggest that they are treated as second-class citizens, because they often have second-rate teachers, limited library resources, and apart from their lectures, little opportunity to participate in the life of the university. Surely these students, whose sacrifice to continue their education is considerable and whose potential is often very great, deserve every possible opportunity for development. It is thus not merely to provide for additional numbers of students, but to give these students a distinctive and distinguished programme of study, that York University is interested in an evening college. It can readily be appreciated that if York University were to concentrate solely on the most obvious problem"too many students for too few places"-we would render a service without in any way making a distinct or creative contribution to higher education in Canada. We would thus do the bare minimum, without imagination, without inventiveness, without courage. There is quite clearly one thing which, in the public interest, we must do: create a large university which will serve large numbers of com-

14

The New University

muting students in Metropolitan Toronto. There are other things which, because of conviction and conscience, we want to do: develop a curriculum which emphasizes general and liberal education, build a residential college, develop an evening college appropriate for working adults. If any should take the view that the things York wants to achieve are unusually ambitious for a university in its infancy, I can only ask them, 'When should a university dream dreams, explore new needs, appraise the intellectual and social climate, set almost unattainable goals, seek to provide a creative thrust in education, if not in its early days before atrophy sets in?" Far too soon will conventional and conservative people take over a new institution and resist further changes. Boldness is for now. Almost every university that has come into existence in the past century has, I think, underestimated the opportunities that lay before it and the demands that would be placed upon it. The most evident miscalculation has been inadequate provision of land space on which to expand, resulting in hideous and inefficient "skyscrapers of learning." But there have also been many other evidences of lack of vision: failure to anticipate vast developments in all fields of knowledge, failure to recognize fundamental shifts in the nature of the problems that confront modern man, failure to recognize in time the implications of radio and television for teaching in the university, failure to provide in time for the many new professions which later became legitimate members of the university community, and so on. A university which begins with the status quo as its sole object of admiration and ambition is likely to find itself with an antiquated organization and curriculum a decade after its origin. Far better in the beginning to establish imaginative and ambitious goals which draw the university into the future rather than towards the past. I ven-

Development

15

ture to say that, a decade from now, the goals now being established for York will seem modest indeed. Because of the need to expand rapidly to provide many more university places, an important question confronting a university coming into existence at this particular time in history is: "How fast can a university grow?" In spite of brave answers which carefully estimate the number of bricks and dollars required to ptovide for a given number of students, there can be no simple reply to this question. For a university must grow like a tree, and a young tree requires time and gentle care. Its growth can be encouraged; it can hardly be forced. The essential ingredients for the growth of a good university are many, and I mention only a few of them here to illustrate the nature of the required nutrients. First, it is necessary to have a "well-balanced" faculty. All members of faculty must be scholars, but there must be some balance in respect of age, experience, subject of study, temperament, teaching, and research experience. It is not a good university if all the members of the faculty are political radicals or if they are all political conservatives; it is not an adequate balance if all are researchoriented without an interest in teaching or if all are teachers with little interest in research; it is a biased faculty if all are "Harvard men" or if all are "Oxford men." Good scholars are difficult to obtain at any time, particularly so now, and will unquestionably be more so in the future. To find good scholars in sufficient number is a difficult and time-consuming task in itself, but to build an adequate balance of influences in the faculty requires great patience and care. It is not a task to be accomplished overnight. Second, a growing university (as, indeed, every university) requires goals, a sense of purpose, and a clear

16

The New University

conception of where it is going. In a new university, these are usually provided in the first instance by its president, but such goals must be understood, taken over, modified, and developed by members of the Board, the Senate, the faculty, and the student body. A community in which all members share a clear sense of direction is not easily or quickly achieved, particularly when its members come to it with a wide variety of past experience. But a real university can hardly develop without such a widely shared purpose within it. This, as will be indicated in a later chapter, is crucial in the development of a university. Third, every university must have its own curriculum. This may seem peculiar when, as already suggested, the curricula of many universities seem and are, in general terms, much the same. If, however, these curricula are studied closely, minor variations will be found in sequences of study, text-books, emphases. A ready-made curriculum cannot be taken over by one university from another because it does not allow for the peculiar interests and specialties of the instructors in the borrowing institution. Thus, even for this minimum reason, a new university must develop its own curriculum. It may borrow heavily from others, but if its courses of study are to have any rationale to those who teach, they must be worked through carefully, painfully, and in great detail. A curriculum which is a meaningful whole to those participating in it-and such understanding is essential if teaching is to be alive and vital-will emerge slowly and only after the most careful thought and study on the part of the faculty. Fourth, one might mistakenly assume that a library could be built quickly, if generously financed. But while adequate funds help, time is even more necessary. Many of the books required for a good university library are rare and difficult to acquire. Librarians must be alert to auction

Development

17

sales, must be in contact with a wide variety of dealers, must solicit donors who have collections of out-of-print scholarly works. The books which a new university might wish to have can only be acquired when and if they become available, and for many of the great classics, such occasions are all too infrequent for the impatient librarian. Fifth, a university, if it is to be a university of quality, must have good students. To get such students, the university must have contact with and the supPort of high-school principals, guidance officers, and teachers. It is to the credit of these people that their confidence is not easily won. They will not recommend to their best students a university about which they are uncertain. Thus, while a new university cannot prove its excellence before it has attracted excellent students, in general, excellent students will not come to it until it has proved itself. It would be simple, given the pressure of numbers, for the new university to accept all the rank-and-file students rejected by the older universities. Indeed, some new universities follow this practice. But if a university is to be an institution of quality, it must obtain good students, keep its student body small, and grow larger only as it is able, by winning the confidence and support of the high schools. It must attract on its own merits its share of the very best high-school graduates in the area. This, too, takes time, and is a further reason why a good university cannot spring up overnight. There are many other matters almost equally important: the development of agreed-uPon administrative procedures; the creation of standards of good teaching in the lecture hall, seminar, and tutorial; the building of good relations among staff; the development of understanding in and support by the community, and so on. But enough has been said to indicate that a university cannot suddenly be created in full bloom. It requires time to grow, and it must

18

The New University

move through its proper stages of development before it can provide any substantial number of university places suitable for students of quality. All of the above suggests the reasons for the main threads in York University's plan of development. It has been necessary, first of all, to find our particular raisons d'etre, not only in meeting the obvious and pressing need, but also in discovering a special role in the field of higher education in Canada. Having discovered this role, we have had to plan to build slowly and carefully a solid phalanx of academic people, and to establish practices that will permit rapid development in the future whei:i the heaviest demand for university services is made upon us. It is now time to stand off and ask from a different viewpoint how a good university can be distinguished from a poor one. This is the task of the next chapter. Given a context within which such a distinction can be made and given the marks of a good university, further chapters will then discuss the desired educational process.

2. CRITERIA

marks of a good university

Some of the things that distinguish a first-rate university from a mediocre institution of higher learning can be quickly enumerated: (I) the quality of the people associated with it; (2) the fundamental idea around which it is organized; (3) the capacity for self-criticism and change that exists within it; and ( 4) the buildings and property it uses. 1. PEOPLE. A good university must have young people who are in the process of becoming good students-people who are actively seeking to acquire knowledge and wisdom. "Those who strive, we shall redeem," said Faust. And this promise indeed has significance in a university. For, as Principal Northrop Frye points out, the great blight that threatens standards in a university is not the few who should not be there and soon fail, but the large group of "... personable, docile, polite young people who do all they are asked to do and yet are somehow not students, but merely young people at college." 'What they lack, from the teacher's point of view," he adds, "is drive or momentum, the sense of urgency of knowledge, the awfulness of ignorance, the crucial responsibilities of an educated man,

20

The New University

the immense gap between wisdom and savoir faire." Far too many of those who come to university are not students; by their striving and the university's stimulation, they must quickly become so or their days at university are wasted. A university cannot provide "drive" for a student; he must find it within himself. But a university can provide stimulation, and this it often neglects to do. A university can do little with young people who are unwilling or unable to find sufficient motivation within themselves to become good students, but it should, at least, try to encourage and nourish whatever capacities these young people have. Good students are those who are learning (among other things) to think, to read, to write, and otherwise to express their ideas clearly. This may seem to be something less than a demanding criterion, but, in fact, it is a crucial test in a university. It is possible to go "through" some places that call themselves universities, and merely to absorb the thinking of others, to learn the technical methods of reproducing their thoughts in acceptable term papers, and, by such means, to "get by" without really learning to think. Something much more is required in a good university. A good student is always slightly rebellious. This does not mean he is always negative, but it does mean he consistently refuses to accept without criticism the points of view of his professor, his text-book, his fellow students. He is reluctant to agree, especially, to the obvious, the popular, or the most attractive argument. He is particularly resistant to those who say, "Of this we can be positive ..." or "There is one thing that is certain . . . ." He brings a searching, questioning attitude to his work. His approach to the world of ideas is that of interrogation: he may well "tear ideas apart with his mind," seek to understand them, enter into them, and, in the process, possess them. Casualness or superficiality is not for him.

Criteria

21

In the educational process, the good student learns to ask questions, and gradually, to express his own point of view; he learns to argue for and to defend his views, and to articulate his position with precision. Such a student must expose himself, be venturesome, risk expressing his only partly formed views to people more knowledgeable and mature than himself. But it is only in this way that he will learn. The good student has the will and the courage to try, even though he may appear, to some, to be precocious or arrogant, or even an exhibitionist. His views, and his methods of presenting them, will undoubtedly be criticized by his professors and by his fellow students, and he must be ready and able to cope with such criticism. But only so will he learn to think, to express his views, and to defend them rationally. A good student risks himself in other ways also. There are many experiences he should have while at university. He must not restrict himself to his books and his seminars. The worlds of music, of poetry, of art, of politics, of athletics, call for him to venture forth in his university years, and thus to discover what merely interests or attracts him and what moves him profoundly. The student's own world must open up in just these years, and it is at this time that he must begin to see and to feel, to experience moods and ideas and people hitherto unknown to him. A good university, of course, must also have a good faculty, whose members exemplify the life of learning. They must themselves be devoted to exploration of the world of knowledge, and, indeed, their lives should be marked by some continuing special contribution to human knowledge and understanding. It is not necessary, as President Pusey of Harvard points out, for every member of the faculty to be one of the world's great scholars, a figure of prestige among his fellow specialists. But it is necessary that

22

The New University

he be a scholar, that his scholarship have brought him to a secure knowledge of his subject, that his knowledge be his own, alive and growing, and not a text-book's information. It is equally necessary that he have some ability, some method, or some artistry, to communicate his learning and his enthusiasm for his field of inquiry and his sense of its importance, to others, particularly to young people. This much is a minimum demand for a faculty member. If, in addition, a faculty has a few men of distinct individuality and character, whose eccentricities enliven, enlighten, and enhance the imagination and vision of the students, so much the better. Too often the university professor merely continues the plodding recital of rather dull facts to which young people have been exposed in high school. For dealing with such facts presented in such a way, docility and a capacity to memorize have proven to be effective in getting high grades. To break this pattern, university teachers should for the first weeks, if not the first months, of the term give time to an imaginative description of their course, to indicating its relevance to life, to outlining great controversies which exist in the field and explaining why they are important, to selecting dramatic material for illustrations of some of the important issues, to encouraging controversy and debate in class, to suggesting the range of thought in the subject being explored, and to pointing out why exploration in depth is required for mastery of the subject. Informal visits with scholars in a variety of fields for conversation about ideas and issues have also been found to stimulate a desire for scholarship. A good faculty is also characterized by interest in, and some devotion to, the university as a whole, its special purposes and objectives. A faculty member's first loyalty is to the world of scholarship, and many, partly for this reason,

Criteria

23

are largely indifferent to the institution in which they teach and pursue their study. One can hardly ask for more than devotion to scholarship, yet the university that is the object of some identification by the scholar is unquestionably better for it. Where there is some affection for and loyalty to the whole institution, there is a basis for "a community of learning" which distinguishes all good universities. And a good university must have, as well, sound and solid people as governors or trustees. The responsibilities assumed by a governor of a university are very considerable, and they must be discharged with unusual understanding and wisdom. In most Canadian universities, there is a division of labour. The governors have responsibility for finances, buildings, and property; the Senate has responsibility for all academic matters. But finances, buildings, and property are meaningful only in terms of academic policy, and the governors must, therefore, be understanding and supportive of academic policy while steadily resisting the temptation to interfere in or influence such matters. Members of the Board of Governors must, then, be people with the qualities of statesmen. They must see, more clearly than most, the role of the university in modem society, the need for its support, the steps to be taken to allow it to fulfil its destiny. But their own role is that of supporting the goals and policies established by the administrative and academic staff, since their prime responsibility for finance is a policysupporting rather than a policy-determining function. In other words, as in the case of medical research in hospitals, professional people determine objectives, in the achievement of which laymen provide financial and moral support. There are, of course, numerous matters on which close collaboration and co-operation are required, but this is always a collaboration of equals and not of employer and

24

The New University

employee. There are few attitudes more damaging to the status and integrity of a university, or of scholarship generally, than that which assumes that the academic staff · ·1 servants" or "h·ued han ds" or "empIoyees. " are "c1v1 A good university is the co-operative product of great citizens on the Board of Governors and great scholars on the faculty, both of whom respect each other's particular abilities, and who work together to achieve common and compelling objectives. 2. IDEAS. A university of quality must also have, as has already been pointed out, a special raison d'etre. It is not sound to assume that, if only one has the traditional academic departments, and a faculty demonstrating some devotion to research and teaching, a good university will result. The search for truth and the love of learning must not only exist, but must find a particular expression in a particular setting. It is not the football team, or the heating plant, or a certain geographic area known as a campus, that is the common or cohesive element in a good university. Teaching and research, of course, are the common core of all universities. But there are innumerable levels at which, and innumerable ways in which, teaching and research may be organized, and the level and manner of operation cannot be left to mere chance. The Universities of Oxford and Toronto have some things in common, but much that is not; and each is quite different from Harvard. One can usually distinguish university graduates by the universities from which they came, for every good university puts its distinctive stamp on its sons. One can even identify those who come from poor universities: those that have no sense of any kind of special mission as their own. Such universities are nebulous entities, something like intellectual shopping centres. All that unifies them is a common physical property. They are places where scientists

Criteria

25

are concerned only with their narrow specialization, humanists with theirs, social scientists with theirs. These specialists barely recognize even that they also have students in common. The implications of these views for York are plain. We are a university devoted to liberal and general education, and we operate on the premise that all specialists should have a foundation of education which provides some understanding of themselves as persons, some understanding of the political system to which they profess allegiance, some understanding of the world in which they live. Far too many students graduate from university, we believe, without enough such understanding, and their outlook and vision are thereby limited. If a cold war is a war for the minds of men, all universities have some special responsibility for helping every student to understand ideological difference, and to identify his own allegiances. Accordingly, at York, though we plan ourselves to provide for the training of specialists, we will not permit our students to undertake such training until they have been given a foundation in general and liberal education. This programme gives us a distinct raison d'etre, a .purpose which unites us, a goal we will constantly seek to achieve. A university without its own special goals will have less cohesion, less sense of purpose, than is necessary for eminence. 3. SELF-CRITICISM. A university, like any individual or institution, must have the capacity for self-criticism. It needs built-in, organizational machinery to facilitate change as soon as change is necessary and desirable: as much as is needed when it is needed, and neither too much, too early, nor too little, too late. In every large and ancient institution, established ways of doing things cut deep ruts, which make it difficult to

26

The New University

deviate from worn but misleading paths. Universities establish courses, schedules, routines, examinations, and so on, which are most easily handled if they are simply repeated, pretty well in the same form, year by year. Criticism of an established pattern is often resented, and substantial change is mightily resisted. This is what institutionalization almost inevitably implies. Rigidity in a university is especially rigid: as one wag has said, "It is easier to move a graveyard than to secure change in a university!" One common way of avoiding change is that of trying to get someone else to make the change. In the case of the university, disaffection with the status quo is alleviated by being critical of the education with which students come to university. I have heard similar criticisms of high schools voiced in universities in Peking, Moscow, London, and Toronto. Of course, there must be pressure to improve the quality of high-school work. But the first obligation of any university is to improve the quality of its own work. It is frequently said, for example, that senior matriculation in the Province of Ontario is inadequate because it represents a year of "just cramming." At the same time, the same people say that success in senior matriculation is the best criterion for admission to university, because those who do well on "matric. exams" do well in university. The obvious question is never asked-or at least I have not heard it asked in universities-could it possibly be that success in "cramming" at high school leads to success in university because the university itself offers its crown of success to those who are merely expert crammers? Whatever the answer to this question, clearly some of the criticism made about high-school work has equal cogency for the university. If the universities are to be adequately informed about and rationally critical of their own performance, every

Criteria

27

university should have at least one competent scholar free of every responsibility except that of annually reporting to his colleagues on the obsolescence of antiquated courses and methods, on changes in the world of learning, and, indeed, on changes in the world, physical and social, of which they should take cognizance to keep themselves relevant and up to date. His function would be, in part, like that of the accountant-general in government, who makes independent judgment about expenditures, costs, and fiscal policy, without constriction by the partisan limits of political parties or policies. The scholar of whom I speak would be similarly concerned with the intellectual balance-sheet in his university, and with its relevance to the changing world in which it exists. There are some who assert that such a scholar would do little except attract hostility from his fellow scholars. There is a sense in which this must inevitably be true as long as a university remains isolated from the community and is considered to be above public criticism. At present the only criticism of a university's policy and practice comes from the scholars within the university, and where this is fundamental and serious criticism (as would be the case with the scholar-critic referred to above), it tends to be contained within the university. But if the scholar-critic's annual report were released to students, to the Board of Governors, to the public press, it would unquestionably stimulate debate on many issues and practices now carefully kept from the public eye. It may well be time for the university to come out into "the wide, free world of all mankind," and to expose its objectives and practices to public discussion and debate. 4. BUILDING AND PROPERTY. A university setting must be spacious, encouraging leisure and contemplation, stimulating the imagination, providing opportunity for serious

28

The New University

study and discussion. In every way, it should represent what is beautiful in architecture and landscape, so that students may absorb and assimilate a quality of life they might otherwise miss. Everyone, of course, recognizes the value of a university and the need for a university to have the best land and buildings in the community. King Henry VIII said, of the lands being given to universities, "I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our universities." But, even as King Henry weakened in his resolution as the universities became critical of the frequency and the manner with which he disposed of his wives, so many people today will find a variety of reasons to deny the universities the best lands. But surely the long view justifies Henry's first judgment! For of all the institutions of contemporary society, the university shows the greatest promise of enduring. When land is sought for a university, it is intended as a location for an institution which will continue, not for a few decades, or even a hundred years, but for a thousand or more years. The influence of a university in shaping the community and the society in which it now exists, and will exist, promises to be greater in the future rather than less. So Canada's best lands should be available for this purpose. Where planners show little vision, and provide inadequate land, there will appear the "skyscraper of learning" (as in Moscow), instead of "units of learning" in which the personal and individual teaching that have characterized our best universities may take place. The facilities of a university must make possible that which it hopes to do for its students. There must be beautiful grounds for quiet walks; small, comfortable rooms for discussion; accessible and adequate library facilities; space for lectures, drama, and music; good playing fields;

Criteria

29

an abundance of fine art in the form of paintings, old silver, and other art objects; full-scale laboratories and scientific equipment. It is not impossible, as a few universities such as Oxford have demonstrated, to accommodate a large number of students and yet to provide intimacy and excellence. All of this is expensive, requiring ample funds for both capital and operating expenses. Indeed, the costs would seem excessive, unless one considers the value of the result: the production of young men and women who understand the Canadian way of life, and who possess the knowledge and capacity to carry further the process of civilization, not only in Canada but throughout the world. It is time now to specify more precisely what all this is for. The next chapter will deal with what it is all for, in terms of educational process, and the one that follows, in terms of educational product.

3. VEHICLE

a liberal and general education

The decision to give emphasis to general and liberal education at York University arose out of what appeared to be a significant gap in higher education in Canada. No one will question this century's need for specialists in a wide variety of fields. But when specialization requires or implies that knowledge be limited to one narrow area of life, and that an individual's view of mankind be lacking in perspective and that he be insensitive to the problems of the modern world, then certainly there is need to question the adequacy of an educational system that produces such specialists. The problem is: Is it possible to produce specialists who are competent in their speciality but who also have a general awareness and knowledge of the society of which they are members and the world in which they live? It is frequently assumed that time does not permit both tasks to be satisfactorily performed in a regular first-degree university programme. But the Soviet Union is able, in its university programme, to produce specialists of recognized competence without neglecting general education as they conceive it. There are few greater distortions of Soviet education than

Vehicle

31

that which suggests that it is concerned solely with intensive specialization. Great emphasis is placed there on what they call "general education," as a background for specialization. And both general and specialized education are provided in less time than is required for a specialized degree in Canada. The Soviet university student has had ten years in what is something like our public and secondary schools, and he begins his university programme having accomplished no less work in the sciences and humanities than have Canadian students who have taken twelve or thirteen years to do their preparatory work. At university, the Soviet student has two and one-half years of general education, followed by two and one-half years of intensive specialization, before he earns his first degree. At the end of this fifteen-year period of study he is considered by many authorities to be as advanced in some disciplines as a student who receives a Master's degree in many Canadian and American universities, and as adequately prepared in other disciplines as a student who receives a Bachelor's degree in the best Canadian or United States universities. (This is not simply my own impression, but is confirmed by a detailed study by Alexander B. Korol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published in 1957 under the title, Soviet Education for Science and Technology.) It is true that the content of the first two and one-half years of study in a Soviet university is not something that we in Canada would wish to duplicate. But what is done is consistent with the aims of the state and, in terms of time, this general programme is given equal status with the later period of specialization. During the first half of the fiveyear university programme, all students study the history of the Communist Revolution, historical and dialectic materialism, Soviet literature, a foreign language, and a subject in which they will later specialize. Regardless of

32

The New University

specialization, then, a Soviet university graduate is likely to be a person thoroughly versed in Soviet history, literature, and philosophy. He is likely to know the world situation as seen from the Soviet viewpoint; and he is probably able to understand and to speak a foreign language. How different are most of our specialized graduates, who know little about their own government, little about current public issues, and very little about the rapidly changing nature of the political world! One thing the Soviets have to teach us is that general and specialized education are not incompatible, from the standpoint of time, in a first-degree programme. And their objective of producing specialists, knowledgeable and intelligent-even though extremely biased-about national and world issues should give us pause for thought. We in North America may well ask ourselves whether it is sufficient, in the kind of world in which we live, that our universities should produce students who are merely good engineers, or good pharmacists, or, even, good physicists. The conception of education to which Western civilization has long been devoted is one in which the great questions, ideas, and achievements of the past are the central focus for study, not simply because such study is valuable in itself, but also because of the light it sheds on contemporary problems of individuals and nations. At one time, the basis of such a programme was the great classical studies; but as knowledge expanded, subject-matter spread, until today the major areas of study are the humanities (of which the classics are a part), the social sciences, and the natural sciences. If one is to know something of one's personal and social inheritance, as well as something about the world in which one lives, some study in all three of these broad areas of discipline is required. But universities in Canada have so structured their curriculum that the

Vehicle

33

degree of specialization they often require makes it difficult, if not impossible, to become acquainted or familiar with disciplines other than one's own. C. P. Snow, in his now famous Rede Lecture, said: A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent

of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's7

One might normally find among natural scientists ignorance of the basic principles of anthropology, or among social scientists, of the basic principles of mathematics. What is unfortunate is that specialization has so possessed universities that they produce students with a limited, if not distorted view, of the world of knowledge. The aim of General Education is to provide the breadth of study which gives a student some knowledge of the major disciplines, both for the training they give to the mind and for the understanding and preparation which they give for life in this chaotic world. The social scientist ignorant of history, the humanist unaware of the discipline of the scientific method, the scientist insensitive to moral values-any one of them, or the infinite variety of their species-is ill equipped for leadership in the modem world. The importance of specialists who have enough knowledge in other disciplines to be able to communicate with specialists in fields other than their own was stressed many years ago by John Stuart Mill, when he said: To have a general knowledge ... of a subject is to know only its leading truths, but to know these not superficially but thoroughly, so as to have a true conception of the subject in

34

The New University

its great features; leaving the minor details to those who require them for the purposes of their special pursuit. There is no incompatibility between knowing a wide range of subjects up to this point, and some one subject with the completeness required by those who make it their principal occupation. It is this combination which gives an enlightened public; a body of cultivated intellects, each taught by its attainments in its own province what real knowledge is, and knowing enough of other subjects to be able to discern who are those who know them better.

What was true in 1867 for Mill is even more true today. Wisdom and perspective cannot be the product of a narrow education which leads a student to learn "more and more about less and less." Awareness of the multiplicity of facts and forces that must be considered in any decision essential in our day is of greater importance as knowledge expands and the need for wisdom increases. The aim of a liberal education is quite simply to liberate. We all grow up in relatively narrow situations compared with the range of human life and thought around the world, or the variety of patterns that the history of mankind presents. We tend, therefore, unless pains are taken to provide otherwise, to be parochial in one sense or another. In the last century this was bad enough; in today's world it is fatal. A liberal education is an education designed to bring a student out from his parochial thoughts, feelings, and attachments into the wide, free life of all mankind at all times and places, in its best and highest manifestations. Without losing a viewpoint of his own or loyalties of his own, the liberally educated student sees himself in relation to the whole human enterprise, in which he must, in any case, co-operate. This is why the words '1iberal" and "general" cannot be separated. Only a general education dedicated to liberation can produce such people. Knowledge must be acquired in

Vehicle

35

relation to other knowledge, in relation to the history of its own development and man's, in relation to art, to ethics, to philosophy-indeed, to the universe, which it is precisely the task of a university to report upon, represent, and constantly keep before the student. He should finally know his world-as far as it can be now known-and feel enough at home in it that he is prepared to join in the total human venture of improving and enriching it for his contemporaries and descendants. Anything less than this robs him and them of civilization itself. Within this programme for a general and liberal education, the social sciences (and the study of the inescapable problems of social philosophy) should have a very special part, for at least two reasons. It is trite but true to say that man, who is well on the way to conquest of the physical universe, is anything but well on the way to control of, or at least understanding of, himself. This alone would be sufficient reason for the emphasis suggested. When it is added, however, that the very growth and success of the social sciences have raised fresh, and now paramount, problems of understanding and evaluation for every would-be literate person, the argument for an important shift in the focus of educational attention is redoubled in force. If general education fails to incorporate an adequate understanding of what the social scientists are trying to tell us, we may shortly expect a society of people perhaps otherwise literate, but helplessly at the mercy of every quack who has, for exploitative reasons at least, half-listened to what the social scientist has to say. This a university takes to be its duty to forestall. Men now live in an entirely new world-a world in which, for example, time-distance has changed more radically in the past fifty years than in the previous five hundred. Peoples of many colours, of many customs, of

36

The New University

many religions, now live-in terms of accessibility-closer together than did the people of Canada at the tum of the century. Just as Canadians were then confronted with problems of building a nation, so we (and others) are now confronted with the problem of building a world: a world in which the concepts of peace, and justice, and righteousness, and equality have meaning and application. This task requires men who know history, and geography, and sociology; who understand psychology and the forces that motivate men, and how such forces may be disciplined and directed; who are acquainted with the wisdom of the ages and the ideals and values that lie therein; who understand the nature of science and the scientific method, and the new power that has been placed in the minds and hands of men. A university cannot be an ivory tower-or a steel and concrete tower, as it is more likely to be today-sealed off from the outside world. If it does become too isolated and inbred, immune from the infections that sweep the social and political body of the world, a university will be unable to prepare men for the life outside it. Too great isolation would be dangerous to the vitality of a university and the good health of the country. Of course, a university cannot be turned inside out because the world is upside down; its courses cannot be juggled thoughtlessly to take account of passing fads. But neither can a university resign from the twentieth century and its problems. Far too many university departments have never adjusted to the modem world. They exist as beautiful monuments to a way of life that has disappeared. And far too many intellectuals in the university have, as C. P. Snow remarked, "never tried, wanted, or been able to understand the industrial revolution," let alone the present scientific revolution.

Vehicle

37

A responsible university must find a place in its studies for the deep and sustained problems of twentieth-century life. As President Conant of Harvard University has said: . . . If a university is to be alive generation after generation, the institution . . . must be in close touch with the life of the community which it serves. The essential motivating force behind a university's scholarly work and research, in all_ times and places, when universities have flourished, has been the connection between the scholar's activities and the burning questions of the day. To do otherwise is to be unrealistic, and to prepare students for a world that does not exist and will not again exist.

If these broad general goals are accepted, the task which follows at a new university such as York is that of translating them into a realistic curriculum. There is less freedom to act in this respect than might be anticipated: for a university must begin with the preparation students bring from their high schools, and must graduate students who will be acceptable to graduate schools in the leading universities in the country. Further, a new university commences in a social situation in which the evils of early and extreme specialization are only beginning to be recognized. The opportunity to change the standard curriculum is severely limited by these facts. A special problem exists with regard to professional schools and faculties. There is a growing awareness among them that some exposure to the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences is desirable for their students, and modest attempts are being made to provide for it. But the efforts so far have two substantial weaknesses. Sometimes, for example, a course in the humanities is introduced into the regular curriculum of such a professional faculty as engineering. It fits badly there. The whole

38

The New University

emphasis of the faculty is on professional subjects for which, as knowledge grows, there never seems to be enough time. To the engineering student, for example, the single humanities course he is required to take seems out of place and an arbitrary difficulty to be overcome as quickly as possible; to the engineering professor, the humanities course appears as taking valuable time which the student should be devoting to calculus or chemistry. In this setting, the humanities course does not have a fair chance: it is placed low in the scale of values in the professional faculty and has little chance of achieving equal status with professional subjects. This fact is often resented by those from the Faculty of Arts who have to teach history, or English, or psychology in professional faculties, for many feel they confront an insurmountable task in their attempt to interest students or to achieve university standards of work. This has led to a second major weakness in the plan to introduce "cultural subjects" into professional faculties: the tendency to "adapt" the subject-matter to "the needs of the profession"; to offer courses in "Engineering English," "Eco. f or Foresters, " or even "Busmess · Psycho1ogy. " Th e nom1cs reaction to this tendency is seen in the remark made by the head of a liberal arts department: "Any request for courses other than those developed by the Arts Department for Arts men is a request for adulteration, and is to be resisted to the death." It cannot be stated categorically that it is not possible for professional faculties to develop an intellectual climate in which general and liberal education courses are treated with respect and appreciation. Some great universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have apparently been successful in developing such a climate. But it is admittedly difficult. I would not deny that a highly specialized education may

Vehicle

39

have elements of a liberal education. But the chances of its possessing such qualities are, by definition, limited-and they are greatly decreased for students who are not living in residence. Far better, we would argue at York, to place the student first in a position from which he may view the world, past and present; from which he may feel and savour the ways and habits of mankind; from which he may spread his academic wings to explore the world of knowledge. Only after such an experience should he begin to specialize. And if his first induction to general and liberal education has been successful, he will not-indeed, cannot-be again a person of limited and narrow views. The result of this conviction led me to recommend to the Board of Governors in May, 1960, a distinctive curriculum for York University. In diagrammatic form, it appears below. The plan requires all students to take a basic two-year programme of liberal and general education. The courses in the three major areas would seek to provide breadth of understanding in the humanities, the social REQUIRED TWO-YEAR PROGRAMME Humanities

Social Sciences Natural Sciences

I !

Professional Faculties (2 yrs.) Communications Fine Arts Business Education Journalism Medicine

!

I

I ! Liberal Arts and Science Programme (2 yrs.)

!

GRADUATE SCHOOL

I !

Specialized Programme (2 yrs.) History Psychology Sociology English Geography etc.

!

I

40

The New University

sciences, the natural sciences. In the natural sciences, for example, the first course would involve study of the history and philosophy of science, the nature and significance of the great scientific discoveries, the nature of the scientific method, and so on. It would be not unlike the famous course taught for many years by President Conant to all freshmen at Harvard University. It is not intended to produce scientists; it is intended to produce men who have some understanding of science. Similar treatment would be given in first-year courses in other disciplines. After this two-year period of study, there are three main academic paths from which the student must choose. (I) He can choose a specialized course and begin intensive study in the subject of his preference, for example, history or physics or psychology. The successful completion of two years of further study therein would lead to a Bachelor of Arts degree in the subject of specialization. (2) The second path continues the liberal and general programme for two more years. (3) The third path leads to professional schools in which the period of time required for a first degree would, of course, vary with the profession. A variation of these three routes is the completion of a first-degree programme in either the specialized or the general course and then a move to a professional school. In each case, however, every student is required to take two years of study in the general and liberal arts programme prior to specialization of any kind. We are convinced of the value of such a two-year programme, not only because of the virtues inherent in the studies contained within it, but also because it brings together students with emerging, or fully developed, interests in specialized subjects. Their interest and knowledge in these subjects is constantly being challenged by their fellow students. Students do indeed educate each other. But, if they are to do this effectively,

Vehicle

41

they must be in contact with students of quite different interests as well as with students of a similar academic disposition. Having decided the general direction of York University, it remained to recruit the nucleus of a faculty whose members would have sympathy with, if not enthusiasm for, this approach to higher education, and to ask them to develop and refine the suggested curriculum. A committee of faculty was engaged throughout the academic year 1960-1961 in this dual task of refinement and development. Consultations with senior academic people in both Great Britain and the United States were held and York has benefited from the wisdom and experience of these people. In addition, studies are being made of the kinds of professional schools which York should develop, in order to define the general areas in which a university should provide education and also the content and emphasis of study in each area. It is not difficult to identify a need, for example, for a school of journalism. But investigation of this field leads to the conclusion that, on the one hand, many schools of journalism are merely trade or technical schools, and that, on the other hand, journalism is a part of the much larger field of communications, in which new theory and knowledge are emerging and in which an increasing number of people are now engaged. A new university has the obligation not merely to duplicate but to re-think the role and function of higher education in the modern world. With such resources as we have, and as are available to us, we at York are seeking to do this.

4. AIM

human qualities and a humane world

A new university can find a precedent for almost anything it may wish to do. Contrary to popular belief, the early universities were highly utilitarian and pragmatic. Masters who depended upon fees for their livelihood found it expedient to be "realistic," to give their students "what they wanted." Says a twelfth-century advertisement by a master in Italy: The course is "short and practical, with no time wasted on outgrown classical authors, but everything fresh and snappy and up-to-date, ready to be applied the same day if need be." Such appeals are not now respectable. A modem university has little need to recruit students, but if there were such a need, a university today has far more subtle means of presenting its case. Profound differences as to what a university is to do have run through history; the present conception of the university has emerged but slowly over the centuries. How can one, then, say that a new university-such as York-has any clear inheritance? I think one can. Despite historic differences, there seems today to be reasonably clear and wide agreement about the purposes of a good university and the conditions essential thereto.

Aim

43

I find such seeming agreement in three leading ideas. First, there is a belief in a persistent and relentless search for new knowledge, new truth, and new meaning in discovered truth. The unqualified will to know, the insatiable thirst for knowledge, the unrelenting desire to understand: these are characteristics of the true academic man and the institution in which he functions. The university community has functioned at its best where, and only where, it has been constituted of men with a deep love of learning and a passion for truth. A university must manifest a spirit of investigation, a search for new truth, and a continuing programme of research. The second idea on which I find agreement is that a modern university should devote itself to producing students who have what Coleridge called "the interest of permanence," and who have, as well, what Professor A. S. P. Woodhouse calls "the interest of progression." A concern for students, a desire to expose them to the great civilizations, ideas, and ideals of the past, a wish to train their intellectual capacities and to help them differentiate between sense and nonsense: these necessities remain. But since knowledge expands now at a tremendously accelerated rate (doubling, it is said, about every ten years), and as university graduation is recognized as a first step in a lifelong process of education, to help students develop a capacity for self-education must become a major goal of higher education. A third agreed necessity is that a university's task must be carried out in a context of freedom. Men who do research must be free to pursue disciplined study, however much their study may threaten the established order; and a student must have freedom, that he may learn freedom. It has often been said, in general, that you have to risk your young men if you want to get a generation of men. The

44

The New University

university, no less, must take the chance that some of its students will "go to the dogs," rather than restrict the freedom in which the other young men will learn to make their own decisions, develop self-discipline and the capacity to act as persons of independent spirit. Risks must be taken, but no more effective way of developing character or of discovering the truth has yet been found. Freedom is vital to any university at any time. Whenever it has lost it, a university has lost its spirit. For a century following the Church's triumph over Oxford in 1411, says Rashdall of the University, "all the life had been taken out of it; all real, fresh intellectual activity was beginning to divert itself to other channels." When Sir Frederick Ogilvie said, later, that "a university should always find room for freaks and bores, provided they are really able intellectually," he also was aware that the delicate life of genius and creativity is snuffed out quickly if social or political pressure, enforced allegiance, or conformity is allowed to fetter the mind. This, then, I take it, is our great inheritance at York: the conception of a university as a community of learning in which research, in its broadest and most developed sense, and teaching, in its highest form, are carried on within a context of freedom. But an inheritance may be, for an institution as for an individual, a curse as well as a blessing. Both possibilities are dramatically portrayed in the biblical story of the talents. The inheritance may set the inheritor free-or it may paralyse or incapacitate him. An institution, also, instead of using its inheritance wisely, may, in a new situation, be immobilized by its bequest, and become the most enthusiastic advocate of the status quo. It is said of one respected older institution (not in

Aim

45

Canada!) that it is admirably fitted to preserve the ideas of the past, but less well fitted to introduce new ones. This is true, perhaps, of all older institutions. As one sage observed, "The truth is, Sir, that the institutions of men grow old like men themselves, and, like women, are the last to perceive it!" It seems almost inevitable that the new ideas which originally motivate an organization become fossilized and resistant to change as the institution grows older and the initial enthusiasm fades. Only while a university is young, fresh, and flexible, only while it has the enthusiasms and the strengths of youth, does it have the opportunity to be creative, and to produce something that may be new and valuable. If it is to do so, it must do so at that unique stage of its history when such an attempt is easiest. A new university would be untrue to its heritage if it simply accepted it as fixed and unalterable. A new university has, further, a special chance to be sensitive to the social environment in which it is born. In our day, the social environment is most frequently described in terms of great advances in science and technology: the radical change in time-distance which makes Paris now closer to Toronto than Montreal was to Toronto fifty years ago; the vast improvement in technology that permits giant machines to spew forth ready-to-use refrigerators in such numbers that fast-frozen dinners can be served readily in every home in the country; the great development of nuclear energy; amazing calculating machines that tell us who won the election even before we vote; rocket techniques, satellites, and many other wonders of our age. But while these advances bring vast new opportunities to all of us, they also bring problems-and, indeed, threatsto the very civilization they were designed to advance. The "advances" have brought not merely motor-dogged streets,

46

The New University

but man's submission to the machine, his surrender to mass organization, and his steady, almost rhythmic march towards world disaster. They have also brought the threat of automation of man himself, loss of faith in himself and of ability to invent and create social forms and institutions to protect and nourish the things he values most. The major concerns of our world should not, surely, be how to improve technology (that will continue to improve by sheer momentum), but how to cure man's spiritual impotence; not how to create new forms of transPortation, but how to apply creativeness to our social structure; not how to link continents physically, but how to achieve decency in human relations the world over. Since York University is new, it is called, then, to use its inheritance creatively and effectively in a new situation. It must be a university in the traditional sense, and yet be sensitive to the peculiar needs of modem man. Hence we at York must give special emphasis to the humanizing of man, to freeing him from those pressures which mechanize the mind, which make for routine thinking, which divorce thinking and feeling, which permit custom to dominate intelligence, which freeze awareness of the human spirit and its potentialities. (If you think I exaggerate these needs, probe the thinking of young people around you, look carefully at the kind of thinking required by many of the examination papers young people write, study the narrow range of thought on any vital question and ask yourself: How free is the human mind and the human spirit in this free society of ours?) To free man to use all his creative powers is the fundamental pufPoSe of liberal education. This is also the great need of the world today. And this is the first aim of York. The quality of human beings has always been a matter

Aim

47

of concern to educators. Let me speak briefly about some of the human qualities which should particularly concern the modern university. First, a university must nourish imagination. In the lives of many great men, often playing a decisive role in that which distinguished them, one finds the intuitive and imaginative process stimulating and giving impetus to their creative work. It is this process which, on the one hand, produces in such a person the "hunch," the shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the ability to take the courageous leap to entirely new concepts; and, on the other hand, which permits him to combine and relate ideas and images in new ways so that new solutions, or new methods of solution to old problems, are possible. Intuition and imagination seem to be essential equipment of great poets, scientists, historians, administrators, and statesmen. These talents are implicit in all great "break-throughs": without them, man would never have Bown the aeroplane, submerged in the submarine, written great poetry or novels, or pressed for change in his social institutions. Some people, strange to say, feel that a university cannot tamper with these human, subtle, and complex characteristics. But surely these are the very qualities in which it should be most interested. As Archibald MacLeish said recently, "there exists in our society the strange and ignorant belief that the life of the imagination lies at an opposite pole from the life of the enquiring mind ... that men can live and know and master their experience of this darkling earth by accumulating information and no more. Men who believe that, have, in effect, surrendered their responsibilities as men." I agree that it is hard to say exactly what should be done. How intuition and imagination enter into the creative process is none too well understood. But what hampers such

48

The New University

insight is understood rather better. Let me illustrate what does not help. Some years ago, a teacher of a Grade IV class told me she wrote on the blackboard the following problem in addition: I+ 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9. She expected that the children, following routine, would require up to five minutes to find the answer. And she was unprepared when, in one minute, one pupil had not only completed the task, but found a new method. "How," asked the teacher, "did you do it?" 'Well," said the pupil, "5 4 9, 6 + 3 = 9, 7 + 2 = 9, 8 + I = 9, and 5 X 9 = 45." What is shocking is that most of us might have been surprised by the work of this student. We would have been surprised because most of us have been taught to handle problems like this in a dull, plodding, and unimaginative way: I +2=3, 3+3=6, and so on. When I told one of my colleagues this story, he suggested that an imaginative teacher would have told the children to solve the problem by any method other than direct addition. An average class, he says, might often find as many as five different ways to get a short-cut answer to the problem. I recall a teacher of mine who in mathematics class would put very difficult problems on the board, and all of us, including the teacher, would guess at the answer before we began to work it out and verify it. The experience of guessing, of discussing the variables we had considered in making the guess, I now consider to have been extremely valuable training in the use of intuition and imagination. Quite different, in some ways, is the kind of imaginative process involved in the long chain that led from the young Einstein's early dreaming and musing to the overwhelmingly powerful general theory of relativity. Some knowledge of physics, of course, he had to have. But the story begins, not as is popularly supposed, with a mature Einstein

+ =

Aim

49

trying to grapple with the scandalous difficulty in physics introduced by the Michelson-Morley experiments with light. Actually, Einstein only heard of these and saw the relevance of his theory to them much later. The story begins with a boy, who knows something of light phenomena, asking himself the question, 'What would the world look like if I were riding on a beam of light?"-a boy's question not very different from 'What would the earth look like if I were on the moon?" Led by this phantasy, dreaming, imagining, he could work out its consequences in a disciplined way, as sought knowledge came to hand. All the elements that were later to yield the mature theory were latent in the bold phantasy, and could probably either have come in no other way or, even if they had come, only after generations of more prosaic labours. I was interested recently in reading Professor Alfred North Whitehead's description of the contribution of scientific training to character. He says, in part:

If we are finally to sum up in one phrase the peculiar impress of character to be obtained from a scientific training, I would say that it is a certain type of instinctive direction in thought and observation of nature, and a facility of imagination in respect to the objects thus contemplated, issuing in a stimulus to creativeness. At another point, he remarks: It is essential to keep in mind that science and poetry have the same root in human nature. Forgetfulness of this fact is ruining our educational system. . .. Efficient gentlemen are sitting on boards [in both high school and university, let it be noted] determining how best to adapt the curriculum to a uniform examination. Let them beware lest, proving themselves descendants of Wordsworth's bad man, they "Take the radiance from the clouds In which the sun his setting shrouds."

50

The New University

Failure to nourish intuitive and imaginative powers is one reason why so much of the material fed by the high school and the university to young people has little, if any, meaning to them. Unless a student learns to relate facts, to enjoy speculating about them, to receive them into his imagination, they remain sterile and largely meaningless. And if the premise is accepted that the university is the beginning rather than the end of education, it surely must be especially concerned with freeing and stimulating those powers in the student which he must bring to bear on new material, if he is to work creatively on his own in the modem world. (I might say, parenthetically, that ''big business" now also recognizes the importance of, and makes provision for, creative people in a variety of disciplines, whose main task is to think imaginatively about the whole industry. I hope universities will not become so unimaginative that thay will surrender their reputation as a source of imaginative people to other institutions.) The freeing and nourishment of intuition and imagination do not, of course, make hard and disciplined study less important. Intuition and imagination favour the prepared mind. Disciplined study and the qualities of which I speak are not antagonistic; they complement each other-indeed, they need each other desperately. At this time in history, particularly, it is imperative to make the classroom, the seminar, the whole university, a more lively place, a place in which conjecture and speculation are encouraged, in which even "intelligent absurdities" are considered before being discarded. It is also imperative that universities learn how to help their students become more emotionally sensitive. By emotional sensitivity, I mean the capacity to be deeply moved and profoundly influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and

Aim

51

activities of other people. Imagination is, of course, required, but also something more: the human ability to understand a person or a problem not only with the intellect but also with the emotions. A man who says "I have the feel of the situation" usually means he knows with both his mind and his heart. It is that quality which Shakespeare expressed in King Lear when the aged king says "You see how this world goes" and the blind Gloucester replies, "I see it feelingly." Lack of this capacity to see the world "feelingly" is perhaps the greatest threat to modern civilization. For unless we understand the feelings of other people, unless we are able, as George Mead puts it, "to take the role of the other," unless we are emotionally sensitive, we do not understand the problems of the world in which we live. We stand today on the threshold of a great transition in world power. It is not unlikely that fifty years hence this world will be dominated by non-white people. Only those among us who have some capacity for "the feel of things" as well as "the look of things" will understand what is happening. Recognition of facts and numbers alone-that white people are now outnumbered two to one -does not provide for full understanding. Nor does factual knowledge of the aspirations of the U.S.S.R. or the People's Republic of China, or the people of Africa and Asia, give more than a partial picture. We must be able to feel what, for example, centuries of white superiority in attitude and practice now mean to the coloured peoples. What does it mean to have been treated for so long, even if kindly, as if one were inferior? Unless we have some capacity to know with both our minds and our hearts, we will be unable to cope with this world of change. Thus, without the ability to see the world "feelingly," we cannot

52

The New University

hope to assist in developing a world family that can live in peace. Indeed, the questions William Blake raises in his Songs of Innocence, may be highly relevant today: Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief? Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share?

Certainly the capacity to "see the world feelingly" has characterized many great leaders. Roosevelt and Churchill both were blessed in this respect. Millions of "little people" wept at Roosevelt's funeral because they believed he had understood, and felt deeply about, their problems. And who has ever understood a people as, in the war years, Churchill understood the British people? Courage and devotion and sacrifice came to the fore as that great man, by that great talent, rallied his nation. I will not here attempt to say how emotional sensitivity is to be developed. But I do know that if a university is to do so, it must be a free academic community in which great literature and history and philosophy and science are taught by people whose emotions are not immobilized by the fear of being human while in academic garb. A third peculiarly modern problem, and again one of particular relevance for universities, is that of establishing identity. Who am I? is surely the question that most seems to trouble modern man. In one sense, the problem is as old as history, but its nature has changed, and radically so, in the last century. For while in the recent past one conformed to a given pattern of belief and behaviour, one conformed in the sense of "electing" a set of principles in which he had confidence and pride. Today, the tendency is to conform, not to a given set of principles, but to custom, to the prevailing and fashionable belief or practice of the day. And since these beliefs and practices change

Aim

53

frequently, there is uncertainty and insecurity. The question Who am I? is an acute one for men who are never quite certain in what they believe, or what principles guide their lives, or how they should behave. Like the newest soldier on the drill 6eld, modem man anxiously watches those around him to make sure he stays in step. In our society, as Allan Wheelis suggests, "his character acquires a 6ne readiness for some unknown undertaking to which it is never committed. He is burdened by a sense of futility and longs for something or someone to give meaning to his life, to tell him who he is, to give him something to live for." The result is that the light touch has supplanted the 6rm grip, the launcher of trial balloons has replaced the committed man. We appear to avoid final decisions, to maintain all things subject to revision, and stand ready to change course when the winds change. The key words of our time appear to be "flexibility," "adjustment," and "warmth"; the key words of our grandfathers were "work," "thn·ft, " an d "w1·11 ." An d the change has not brought comfort, or serenity, or security to modem man. Rather is our day characterized by personal anxiety and personal anguish. The problem is more evident than the solution. But surely the process by which men discover values and beliefs-indeed, discover themselves-necessitates searching and striving for personal answers to the fundamental questions of life. There are few places where these fundamental questions can be pursued as effectively as in a university, if the university provides opportunities for, and assistance in, this search. It is not the task of a university, of course, to provide definite answers for, or ends to, the search. The function of a university is to help to clarify the questions, to show how great minds of the past have dealt with these questions, to introduce relevant data from contemporary

54

The New University

life, to encourage individual students to work through these materials and to find their own answers and their own identity. York University is not a denominational university, but I hope it will be concerned always with religious and philosophical questions-indeed, that no student will graduate who has not been confronted, at least, with those questions without answers to which man is something less than man. The characteristics I have spoken of cannot be directly taught, are not to be placed in neat categories, cannot be worked at for "credits." They must inhere in the ethos of a university. If they are not found there, the very spirit of the university will wither. I have spoken many times of the ethos of a university. I must now turn directly to examining the relation between ethics and education.

5. PROCESS

education as active ethics

In discussing the involvement of education with ethics, I begin by quoting a great philosopher: . . . Mankind are by no means agreed about the best things to be taught, whether we look to virtue or the best life. Neither is it clear whether education is more concerned with intellectual or with moral virtue. The existing practice is perplexing; no one knows on what principle we should proceedshould the useful in life, or should virtue, or should the higher knowledge, be the main aim of our training?

This is not a modem philosopher or educator raising this relevant question, but Aristotle, speaking many centuries ago. The same question is still being asked; and the same basic problem is still perplexing men. There are many who seem to say that a university (and I will confine myself largely to that setting) is concerned solely with matters of the intellect (as if the intellect were a separate and unrelated entity possessed by man), and that matters of virtue, or of goodness, or of ethical conduct, are personal matters which lie outside a university's province. There are others who seem to believe that the

56

The New University

primary function of a university is to prepare students for various professions in society, and that however important such questions as virtue and goodness may be, they have little relation to the real and practical world in which men must work and earn a living. Two interesting developments are at present evident in North American universities. One is the growing status of the physical sciences and the other is the increasing number of professional faculties. Now these are natural and appropriate developments in our society. But both of these developments give an emphasis in and a focus to university education that make questions of goodness or virtue of secondary or tertiary importance. Indeed, it is possible for a student to go from high school to any one of many universities, and, if he is specializing, or if he is studying a profession, to take only courses related to the profession or the specialty. These developments would be less important-since course work is only a part of university education-if it were not for the fact that they influence the whole structure and character of the university. And this influence, while it does not necessarily depreciate ethics or philosophy or religion, nonetheless tends to exclude effective consideration of their content by giving priority to other topics, which then appear to be of more immediate or more practical concern. My own view is that these developments are extremely unfortunate. It is often said that the purpose of a university is to discover and to disseminate knowledge. But a university can hardly stop there. "Knowledge grows but wisdom lingers," says the philosopher, and it is surely the responsibility of the university itself to use, and to help its students to use, knowledge in the treating of the great and difficult problems of life. It is not sufficient that men be

Process

57

trained at university to cut holes in a mountain, or in a tooth, or in an abdomen, if they have not also been led to contemplate the nature of their own being, or the meaning of their own behaviour. I believe that a university must constantly engage in the task of seeking to know and understand the nature of truth and goodness, as one of its primary functions, and that it should, therefore, be engaged in endless debate and discussion of all questions relevant to this search. While it is not the business of a university to become involved in the intricacies of establishing political policies or ethical goals for individuals, it is surely the task of university teachers to encourage and stimulate, by their own questions and by discussion, consideration of broad social goals which may give focus and purpose to society and to the members of society. As Walter Lippmann said: ... if civilization is to be coherent and confident it must be known in that civilization what its ideals are. There must exist in the form of clearly available ideas an understanding of what the fulfilment of the promise of that civilization might mean, an imaginative conception of the good at which it might, and, if it is to Hourish, at which it must aim. That knowledge, though no one has it perfectly, and though relatively few have it at all, is the principle of all order and certainty in the life of that people. By it they can clarify the practical conduct of life in some measure, and add immeasurably to its dignity.

No institution in modem society is as well equipped as is the university to create a milieu in which such matters may be examined. For a university is inhabited by men who are part of society, yet, in a sense, work apart from it. They are made free in and by their university to pursue their study of society and to speculate about the nature of goodness. They thus have social support for their primary obligation-which is the pursuit of truth.

58

The New University

Besides the provision of an environment in which longrange problems of moral behaviour may be considered, a university has still another obligation. This is to involve each of her sons, every one of her students, in a search for personal answers to the fundamental questions of life. The university's task is not, of course, to provide the answers, but to expose the student to the questions, to give him some resources which he may bring to bear on these questions, and, above all, to encourage him to use his own intelligence in confronting ethical problems. A university should, therefore, be involved in providing those ingredients essential for a developing or maturing philosophy or ethics. It is also involved in disseminating knowledge and in teaching students to think-to utilize knowledge. The great weakness today is that some universities ignore these functions, and some perform them inadequately. They assume that students will relate and integrate fragmented knowledge, that students will discover naturally the great questions with which men have been confronted throughout the ages, that students will themselves readily find the motivation to read and speculate and talk about the nature of beauty and justice and goodness. It is my experience that this does not always happen-even among students in the Faculty of Arts, let alone in the professional faculties. The situation could be improved by requiring all students to study philosophy and ethics at appropriate points in their university curriculum, but much more is required. The very ethos of a university must be such that discussion and debate about fundamental problems of life and living are not only tolerated, but are actually encouraged, nourished, and guided. When this happens, the university is engaged in its real business. It is not merely turning up fragments of knowledge, not just teaching students how to perform professional functions; it

Process

59

is a community, united by a common desire to understand man and his destiny. I want to tum now to a more detailed description of the implications of this view of a university. A system of ethics involves, I believe, some understanding of ourselves, some understanding of the society of which we are members, and a ceaseless search for a rational way of life. These are not, of course, separate and distinct enterprises, but are related and overlapping. I shall discuss them separately, however, both to emphasize the nature of each, and to illustrate the fact that if these are prerequisites to the development of an ethical system, they are also the very matters which a university wishes to illuminate for its own members and for society as a whole. I say, first, that ethics involves understanding of self because ethics assumes or calls for rational choice and behaviour by relatively mature individuals. And such behaviour is not possible for those who are unaware that the goals they pursue are selected for reasons quite different from the reasons they suppose. It should be obvious to everyone that much evil has been perpetrated in the name of goodness. As Dean Inge puts it, many persons fancy themselves attracted to God when they are really only repelled by man. The wisdom and insight that come to us from Freud and those who followed him suggest the complex sources that motivate man in his behaviour. Not only is it extremely difficult to identify the real motives of behaviour, but man has become so skilful at rationalizing his actions that he can readily deceive both himself and his associates. The Puritan devotes himself to work and thrift because he believes this is God's way, although some observers might feel he merely follows the way to the greatest material

60

The New University

reward. (As Max Weber pointed out, the money the Protestant business man accumulates is proof to him that he has fulfilled his ethical duty.) The early liberals were in favour of freedom because freedom was essential to the dignity of man, although many may have felt that some of these liberals sought fredom so that they would be free to build up their business empires. A parent or teacher punishes a child "for his own good," but observers might see such punishment as a way by which the teacher or parent releases some of his own deep, inner hostility. Erich Fromm's conception of the difference between selfishness and "self-love" yields one of the most revealing insights into motive and behaviour. The popular opinion has been that these two terms were synonymous, but Fromm develops, in a most convincing manner, the theory that it is only the self-loving person who is capable of loving others. The person who knows and accepts his own self, and who is confident in his own self-evaluation, does not need others merely for psychic security, but is capable of loving others as he loves himself. On the other hand, Fromm suggests, a "selfish" person has no real self and no fondness for self, so that he must constantly seek security in terms of conquests and power as compensation for his lack of "self-love." In other words, the selfish person is not interested in himself, but only in the evaluation of himself by others. He shines, as David Riesman suggests, in their reflected light: he is their satellite, even when he dominates them. In any case, no one can now deny the complexity of human motive. The understanding of human behaviour, and especially of one's own behaviour, is difficult indeed. But surely if actions are to be ethical, each individual must make the effort to understand the forces which seem to push him in one direction or another. To be ethical

Process

61

requires, as I have suggested, that one be rational; and to be rational requires understanding of man in general, and of self in particular. The degree to which understanding and intelligence and will can regulate and guide impulse and desire is a question which has not been settled, and, indeed, may never be settled satisfactorily. At the moment, an individual's judgment on this matter reflects his beliefs and faith rather than any abstract knowledge. But surely man is not simply the creature of his environment, past or present. Surely he has some capacity to regulate his life. It can be argued with justification that the degree to which he can regulate all or any part of his behaviour is itself determined by his past and present environment. But, given some intelligence and will, combined with a growing knowledge of human motive and increasing understanding of self, it seems probable that man's capacity to regulate his life can be increased. This is, of course, touchy and highly debatable ground. What may be said of the neurotically shy person? To suggest, as some people do, that he should adjust to his condition-even, if necessary, avoid meeting new people who might upset him-seems to me to be a negative and defeatist point of view. There are many types of shy persons, I suppose: some have "adjusted to their condition" and live in isolation as much as possible; others, with varying degrees of effort and sacrifice, regulate or control their fears, and, while never finding it possible to relax and fully enjoy new people and new situations, nonetheless find a means of functioning relatively effectively in business and social situations; some, through knowledge and understanding and will, work through their problems and gradually find their shyness being reduced in intensity. My own view is that these kinds of adjustment represent stages from defeatism to control to understanding and maturity. And

62

The New University

this is the direction of movement required by all who wish to be rational, ethical, mature people. The essence of Freud's insight was that understanding would pave the way for rational action. It was lack of insight into oneself and one's nature that made for moral paralysis. Freud believed, above all, in integrity and in intelligence. His aim was to expose the infantile sources of many of the demands people make on themselves and on others, so that they might become free, or comparatively free, to choose their own way. All of us are bound or imprisoned in greater or lesser degree by our past experiences, some traces of which lie deeply buried in our unconscious mind. Freud's message is that we can only be free to deal with the present and the future as we learn to understand and come to terms with these pressures of the past. Here, as in so many things, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," and many distortions of this line of thought have developed. A juvenile delinquent about whom I read recently explained his behaviour by saying he was a "mixed-up kid" and couldn't help doing what he did. We can use a little knowledge to excuse unethical behaviour of many kinds. One of Arthur Koestler's stories is, I think, relevant: Pythagoras, it is supposed, was drawing triangles in the sand. A friend came up and sat by him and Pythagoras said: "I don't know why I keep on drawing these triangles. They worry me and fascinate me." His friend asked shrewdly: 'What is your relationship like with your wife?" Pythagoras looked a bit downcast, and mumbled that he feared her affections were straying. "Aha!" said his friend: "I now see why you can't keep your mind off those triangles." "I suppose you are right," said Pythagoras. He then got up and did nothing further about developing his theorem! Many a decent man has wanted to do something worthwhile but has had his con-

Process

63

fidence undermined by irrelevant remarks like: ''You only do it because you unconsciously need approval"-as if his unconscious had anything to do with the worthwhileness of what he intended. This reaction is surely a distortion of what is possible for man. There is much talk among the unsophisticated that is confusing and damaging. But to suggest that one would be less creative, less generous, less capable, if one understood oneself and one's motives is to depreciate the functions of knowledge and intelligence. To suggest that one can progress without self-knowledge is to admit, as Lawrence Kubie suggests, that there can be no adults but only aging children. Ethical behaviour, therefore, requires some knowledge of human nature, of its drives and desires, of its complexity and its adaptive capacity. Ethical behaviour requires, particularly, some understanding of self and its unique nature. For without such knowledge and understanding, our choices may well be made, not as rational and mature men, but as well-conditioned animals responding with a predictable reaction to any given stimulus. It is not given to any of us to understand ourselves or others fully, but the whole thrust of a university is towards bringing ever larger areas of behaviour under intelligent direction. Modern society, with its devotion to the machine, admittedly seems to be moving in the opposite direction, but this is a trend which must be opposed by all men of goodwill and intelligence. Our search for understanding of self must be continuous, so that the ethical choices we make may ever more nearly approximate rational and intelligent decisions. I would suggest, secondly, that a man who seeks to behave rationally must have some understanding of social

64

The New University

structure and social forces, and the ways in which these tend to shape and condition both thought and behaviour. It has frequently been said that there is no single human act which would be judged "good" in one culture which would not be judged "bad" in another culture. This is perhaps less true today as the world grows smaller, polygamy less popular, and Flanders and Swann are heard to sing in the four comers of the earth "Eatin' People is Wrong." But the overriding influence of a culture on behaviour is a fact now widely recognized, even though most of us operate as if this were not the case. Of course, it is not easy to see the social forces that mould our behaviour, although once someone identifies them for us, we recognize their potency at once. "The Cult of Fun," about which Dr. Martha Wolfenstein writes, is a case in point. She suggests that in our society we have come to believe that, whatever else it may be, life must be fun: we must have fun with the baby, with the children, with our friends. If we don't have "fun" in a situation which calls for "fun"-and the number of such situations is increasing rapidly-there must be something the matter with us. Let me quote her own words: Not having fun is not merely an occasion for regret, but involves a loss of self-esteem. I ask myself: What is wrong with me that I am not having fun? To admit that one did not have fun when one was expected to, arouses feelings of shame. Where formerly it might have been thought that a young woman who went out a great deal might be doing wrong, currently we would wonder what is wrong with a girl who is not going out. Fun and play have assumed a new obligatory aspect. While gratification of forbidden impulses traditionally aroused guilt, failure to have fun currently occasions lowered self-esteem. One is apt to feel inadequate, impotent, and also unwanted. One fears the pity of one's contemporaries rather than, as formerly, possible condemnation by moral authorities.

Process

65

An additional example comes from Moss Hart's Act One: Even in the long-ago days when I was growing up, the cult of "toughness" in American life was beginning to blossom and Hower. The non-athletic boy, the youngster who liked to read or listen to music, who could not fight or was afraid to, or the boy who had some special interest that was strange or alien to the rest, like the theatre, in my case, was banished from the companionship of the others by rules of the "tough" world that was already beginning to prevail. It is a mistake to believe that this cult of "toughness" was limited to the poor neighbourhood in which we lived. It had begun to pervade other levels of American life, and I suspect that today's bland dismissal of the intellectual and the overwhelming emphasis placed on the necessity of competing and of success are due in part to the strange taboo we have set against that softness in ourselves which brings men closest to the angels. A nation of poets would be no more desirable than a nation of athletes, but I wonder if that toughness and competitiveness, which have become an ingrained part of our character as a people and a symbol of our way of life as a nation, are not a sign of weakness as well as of strength.

Here, then, are two cults in our society. We can hardly deny their existence, and we are forced, I believe, to admit their influence in our lives. My point is simply that a man who is seeking to live a rational life must be aware of these influences and must not accept the behaviour resulting from them as "good" simply because it is a pattern that prevails in the society at large, or in a sub-division of the society. In other societies and cultures the two cults I have mentioned would not be understood, or accepted. I have been particularly impressed by the influence of induced attitude and behaviour in different cultures during recent visits to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. In the Western world, we assume "our enemy" is the Soviet Union; in the U.S.S.R., the assumption is

66

The New University

that the West is the "enemy." Many things in the two cultures-especially the official propaganda-support these two beliefs, so that firm and fixed attitudes about "the enemy" develop and reinforce each other, and there thus emerge in each area the most outlandish ideas about the behaviour of the other. As a result, we in North America and they in the Soviet Union, because of two different cultural perceptions, draw almost opposite conclusions from every action taken by either side. United States' military bases in Europe and Asia are, for us, essentially defensive, a means of protecting ourselves and our way of life. For the Russians, they are offensive bases, from which some day a huge attack on the Soviet Union will be launched. And just as we say, "How can they possibly believe that about us?" so the Soviets said, when I stated some of our beliefs about their behaviour, "How can you think such things about us?" What I am suggesting is that in every culture certain attitudes and behaviour patterns develop which its people unconsciously take over; these become part of daily life, operating almost like an unconscious mechanism to guide and direct what individuals say or do. If ethical behaviour is defined as rational behaviour, we cannot accept such mechanistic direction of our lives as ethical, even though it produces words and actions that appear right and proper to our friends and neighbours. If I am to act as an ethical person towards the Soviet Union, I must think through to my own opinion about that nation. The final result of such thought may be the same as the popular, negative reaction to the Soviet Union; but I have at least discounted the pressure to be negative, and my position is now based on a determination to look objectively at the situation, to make judgments on the basis of the highest intellectual effort that can be brought to bear on the problem.

Process

67

Within a general culture viewed as a whole, there are also innumerable sub-cultures, one or more of which will inevitably influence beliefs and values. Dorothea Natwick's We Happy Few, for example, presents an illuminating picture of the Harvard faculty, into which the heroine marries. The ideas, values, and behaviour of this group are clear and distinctive, and they influence the attitudes and the behaviour of every member. "For this group, everything is 'interesting,' nothing is serious-nothing, that is, except the bitter rivalries for prestige and place. There is a terrible striving always to be avant-garde, to 'discover' Henry James, T. S. Eliot, Melville, or the more obscure English poets. There is a standing rule for admission to the 'happy few' who call themselves 'The Little Group': never to be taken in by any person, idea or emotion." This sub-culture, which developed almost apart from any single individual, conditions-if not directs-the behaviour of every single member of the group. There are innumerable studies to suggest very different attitudes and behaviour patterns among various sub-groups in our society. There are different values placed, for example, on education, on money-making, on skin pigmentation, and so on. There are different attitudes to crime, sickness, family-size. All this, of course, we know, but many of us seem to know it only vaguely and ineffectively. Thus, for many of us, what we say and do is less the result of rational thought than of responsiveness to certain patterns of belief and action characteristic of the sub-societies and sub-cultures to which we belong. If ethical behaviour is rational behaviour, it is required of us to understand the pressures to which we are subjected, and to bring these under control to as great a degree as is possible so that our attitudes and behaviour may reflect what we ourselves truly believe to be "right" and "good."

68

The New University

A third requirement for ethical behaviour is that we be engaged in a ceaseless search for goodness, both as an ideal and as a guiding and directing force in our lives. Most of us, of course, inherit ideas and beliefs which we perpetuate with little effectiveness and without satisfaction. As Walter Lippmann suggests, "Men are choked with the debris of dead notions in which they are unable to believe and unwilling to disbelieve. The result is a frustration of the inner life," which will persist as long as man relies merely on the past and refuses to confront the great questions of life with the new knowledge available to him. The truth of this assertion was revealed to me several years ago when I undertook a study of the religious attitudes and beliefs of some young people in a particular organization in the United States. The findings of this study were incorporated under the title "Religious Beliefs of Youth." Professor Gordon Allport of Harvard University wrote thus, in the Introduction to the book, summarizing its findings: Modern youth has strong religious inclinations and gives at least verbal assent to the religious traditions of his culture. At the same time, he is passive in his religious life, and basically confused about the place of religion in his own personality and in society at large. . . . Echoes of childhood fears, of superstition, of immaturity, continually appear in these findings. Even if they are church-goers, most young people feel detached from the institutions of religion. Like banks and museums, they are regarded as possessions of the older generation, not really a concern of youth .... In reading this book, one is struck by a central paradox. It appears that belief in God is almost universal, prayer is a widespread practice, there is a prevailing friendly estimate of the church .... At the same time, there is a ghostly quality about these beliefs. They seem like heirlooms that fit badly into a modern dwelling. The task of integrating the values of religion with the present needs of daily life is one that very few youths seem able to carry through. Evidence suggests that in not more than a fifth of

Process

69

the cases can one find an integrated religious sentiment at work, binding parts of the personality into a functioning unity.... For most youth, religion in large part seems like a remote if pleasant memory. What it teaches is unclear and its bearing on present activities is dim. To borrow Renan's phrase, its nostalgic quality is like the perfume from an empty vase. My own opinion as to the reason why this state of religion has developed among modem youth is that a given body of dogma has been impressed, or forced upon, or taught to, children and young people in such a way that they have never since felt called upon to question its basic assumptions. My colleague, Professor J. R. Seeley, has painted out that religion has generally been passed on to children in the same way, hut that in other periods of history it was passed on successfully. Why are traditional methods ineffective today? The reason is probably, as he also points out, that the social situation has changed, and is changing, at an accelerated rate, that many of the old landmarks are gone, that new guidepasts can only he found by those willing to he venturesome and to make an effort. There are hut few of these people, and the result is a body of "dead notions" in which, as Mr. Lippmann says, we fear to disbelieve, hut in which we are unable to believe. Most young people reach this point; and, if they stay there, there results a crippling, if not paralyzing, attitude to life. The body of dogma lies as an undigested mass, accepted-even revered-but largely meaningless, and certainly ineffective as a motivating force in life. One aspect of this study1 dealt with people who did have a meaningful belief which was clearly an integral part of 1 This part was not published because the sample upon which my conclusions were based was too small, and because of the difficulty in being precise about such matters.

70

The New University

their life. I was much interested in trying to discover what, if any, common factors were present among the people who had such a faith. Even though the sample was small, the people came from a wide variety of backgrounds. There were in this group devout Roman Catholics, a Quaker, a Unitarian, an agnostic, a number of orthodox Protestant church members, and several members of evangelistic sects. What could possibly be common to the members of such a heterogeneous group? The only common thread that I could find was that in almost every case the person who had a meaningful belief had been through a period of doubt and searching before finding the faith or philosophy that now gave meaning and purpose to his life. This study forced upon me the conclusion that a faith that has never been questioned may be a faith that has little meaning or influence in life. It seemed clear to me that religious leaders-indeed, all educators-should, instead of instructing, training, indoctrinating youth, be encouraging youth to question and to search. In my view, the only way that an individual can find faith, purpose, and meaning in life is to discover for himself that which seems worth believing in, and giving loyalty to. To accept, simply, the views of others means inevitably (to paraphrase Renan) that even though there may be some odour of perfume present, the vase is empty-there are really no Bowers! It may be, of course, that the search will bring acceptance of, and devotion to, the views of a church, or of a synagogue, or of Aldous Huxley, or of Bertrand Russell. None of these views will be meaningful to the individual, unless he has sought, questioned, and discovered for himself that they are compelling for him. I come now to the question of what relation exists between ethics and education. The answer must already

Process

71

be obvious. Ethics requires a rational approach to the problems of life and living. It requires that we undertake a consistent search for answers to life's difficult questions so that we may be helped in finding the "good life." It requires that we seek constantly to achieve greater understanding of ourselves and the social forces that impinge upon us. It requires that we strive ceaselessly to make our thoughts and actions harmonious. As I have already suggested, a university has two responsibilities in this respect. One is that of unending inquiry. The inquiry goes on because it has to go on. The inquiry may cease among men in society at large because of weariness of mind and body, and because sterility has set in. But as long as the vitality of the university is unimpaired, we must agree with Mr. Whitehead: " ... it belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment." This is one of the great functions of the university, and, so long as it pursues this function, it serves both as a symbol of man's search for truth and as a source of inspiration and knowledge to men as they strive individually to find their own ethical system. A university is also dedicated to helping each of its students to meet the very requirements I have emphasized as being essential for a system of ethics: to increase their understanding of self, to develop awareness of cultural forces, to engage upon a search for compelling beliefs. I came across, the other day, an examination paper in Philosophy I had written in 1934. The major part of the paper required discussion of some very complex problems well beyond the capacity of a student. My own answers then, I now believe, were not particularly good, but this is much less important than the fact that, at an early date, I was engaged by a stimulating professor and congenial

72

The New University

fellow students in lengthy discussion and debate about vital questions. One cannot have such an experience and not be helped thereby to speculate about the meaning of goodness, and the nature and direction of one's behaviour. For me, such speculation is an essential part of university education. At present the major emphasis in universities is on vocation. The real business of a university is man. I must now tum to the agency that is responsible for that "real business," and deal with the vexing problem of the relation between quantity and quality in a university. I attempt a beginning in the next chapter.

6. AGENCY

quantity and quality

Even "elementary" decisions about a university, such as the probable best size, are not easily made. Several years ago, when discussions about probable future enrolment in universities in Canada first became popular, I had the opportunity of hearing a number of university presidents speak about the problem. They each knew precisely how large a university should be: it should be large enough to accommodate approximately twice the number of students each had enrolled at that time in his own. One said, "At University we can accommodate 1,200 students without in any way affecting the quality of our work"; another said, "We can take 20,000 students at - - University and still maintain our present high standards." I need hardly add that enrolments at these particular universities were, at that time, 600 and 10,000 respectively. The truth is that most assertions about the "proper size of a university" are sheer guesses; they vary tremendously because they are based on entirely different premises. More nonsense may have been uttered on the subject of a university's size than on almost any other question in the field of education.

74

The New University

While estimates of size are often based on different premises, most estimates nevertheless assume that the primary function is to teach, that students are the first consideration, and that universities, therefore, must be small, intimate communities in which students and teachers sip sherry or tea together each day of term. Such a view of the university has great appeal, especially to those who have a British background and have been raised to believe that Oxford and Cambridge provide the finest possible educational experience. Says The Times Literary Supplement in a description of that life: There they sit every evening, the members of the college: commensales eating together, the young men on their benches on the stone Boor of the hall, the seniors six inches higher on their wooden platform, and all around them the portraits of their predecessors. There they sit every week, tutor and pupil alone together, still in their distinctive dress, talking, persuading each other, convincing themselves that the pursuit of knowledge is a conversation, a conversation between the followers of every art and of all the sciences, a conversation between the generations. The Hower of English youth is gathered up with infinite care and gently placed upon the dais, to live for a while with the ablest of the English teachers, and then to go away and take responsibility for the life of their country.

This is a view of education that stirs us. And with some justification, since those who (in Stephen Leacock's phrase) have been "smoked at" in a tutorial or after tea by a great teacher have had a rare experience that leaves its impress on their lives. The world would be less civilized, and universities would have less certain norms, were it not for Oxford and Cambridge. But we must not forget that Oxford and Cambridge are themselves relatively large universities, each with more than 8,000 students. What makes these universities unique and outstanding are their formulated objectives, and the

Agency

75

mechanics developed to achieve these objectives. When we in Canada think of Oxford, we tend to think, not of the university of 8,000 students, but of the small college of 400 or 500. Over and over again, people say to me, "I hope York University will not be a large university." And when I ask what size it should become, there is considerable vagueness about precise numbers, but a very clear description of the equivalent of one of the Oxford colleges. This seems to be the popular ideal. There are also other grounds for this preference. David Riesman, of Harvard University, has suggested recently that, when a college or university exceeds 450 students, a "we" and "they" attitude on the part of students and staff develops, and the opportunity for an intimate academic community is lost. But a college with 500 students if it is part of a large university is one thing, and if considered as an independent unit is quite another. We in Canada can undoubtedly learn from the experience of Oxford and Cambridge, but we need not copy them. While we should have numerous small colleges, it is extremely unrealistic to think of the future in higher education in Canada in terms only of small, autonomous colleges. We need to protect and nourish the values of intimate teaching. But the social situation in which we find ourselves, and the changing functions of the universities, require us to develop a new concept of the university. We are, whether we like it or not, going to have large universities. What is important is that we be much more imaginative and creative about making our large universities "good universities," and that we spend less time being defensive about the problem of size. Let me tum first to the question of numbers. There are going to be large numbers at Canadian universities in the future for two reasons.

76

The New University

First, there is deeply embedded in our national philosophy the view that all persons should have the opportunity of developing their potentialities, that all children should have the advantages of free schooling, that all students of ability should be permitted and encouraged to continue their education at university. Although the view may be seldom so articulated, except by political leaders on national holidays, it is a view that is widely accepted in this country, and one that will make itself felt in Canada in the future in the form of pressure to increase substantially the proportion of young people who will attend university. The second reason the number of Canadian university students will increase is that our national economy requires ever larger numbers of university-trained people. Such persons are required not solely to man our professions, but also to stimulate and sustain our whole national economy. Indeed, it is being increasingly recognized that there is a relation between educational advancement and economic development. One cannot really distinguish which is cause and which is effect, because there is unquestionably a reciprocal influence. But, in many countries of the world, education is clearly defined as the causal factor. In any case, "the explosion of numbers" in the universities is not confined to North America, but is in evidence in all countries that seek to maintain or to improve their economic position in the world. "Education is the key to economic progress," has been, and probably still is, the dominant theme in the U.S.S.R., and it is being copied throughout the world. Canada cannot resist this pressure to increase its university population. Particularly will the economic influence play a part as Canadians become aware that we are lagging in the educational race. According to figures released by UNESCO, in 1957 Canada stood ninth among the countries of the world

Agency

77

in the ratio of university students to population; the. accompanying table provides the evidence. 1

Country U.S.A. U.S.S.R. Argentine Australia Czechoslovakia New Zealand Poland Roumania Canada Finland

Number of students in universities

Population

2,918,212 2,013,565 142,000 61,879 79,235 12,507 139,244 81,206 72,745 18,765

175,000,000 200,200,000 20,060,000 10,000,000 13,287,000 2,244,000 27,500,000 17,490,000 15,970,000 4,356,000

Approximate number of university students per million population 16,670 10,060 7,100 6,190 5,960 5,570 5,060 4,640 4,550 4,310

It will be noted from the table that the United States has almost four times as many students, in proportion to population, as Canada has, and that the Soviet Union has more than twice as many. In the present world, these countries set the pace. Canada will inevitably be drawn towards the general pattern established by these countries, so far as university attendance is concerned. State the proposition as you will: "To protect our way of life ... ," "To keep up with the Joneses ... ," "To compete economically ... ," "To resist the domination of American culture ... ," the result is the same. There will be a radical and rapid increase in the proportion of young people attending universities in Canada. Thus both for internal reasons, because of our social philosophy, and for external reasons, because of international competition, the number of students that Canadian lSuch comparisons are, of course, extremely tricky and not entirely reliable, as in some cases technical institutes would be included and in other cases not. Nevertheless, the figures provide useful and instructive clues.

78

The New University

universities will be required to accommodate in the future will be much greater than in the past. This is the trend. It is clearly marked and obvious. The only real question in respect of it is whether it is reversible. I am inclined to think not. Methods of providing education beyond the highschool level may he altered, hut it is very likely impossible to alter the basic trend towards a larger proportion of Canada's population attending university and consequently larger numbers in our universities. Moreover, the social quiet in which Oxford and Cambridge came to full development has disappeared, and we are required to plan and develop within a new social milieu. The question, of course, is how great the pressure will actually be on Canadian universities. The figures are approximately as follows: (a) At the present time (1959-60), IO.I per cent of the 18 to 21 age group is at university, and the present university student population is 102,000. (h) By 1970, a conservative estimate is that 15 per cent of the 18 to 21 age group will be in university and the university student population will he 229,000. (c) By 1980, 20 per cent of the same age group may he in university and the student population would then be 350,000. Now if it is assumed that all existing universities in Canada are willing to double their enrolments (and not all of them by any means are willing to do so), they would be able to care for a total of 204,000 students. This would in 1980 he 146,000 short of the estimated enrolment. If new, hut small, universities (an average of 1,000 students each) were started to take in these uncared for students, 146 new universities would be needed. If the average enrolment were set at 2,000, 73 new universities would still he re-

Agency

79

quired; if the average were 4,000 students (and this is, in my view, a large university), it would be necessary to begin now, or in the very near future, to build 36 new universities. I stress the implication of these possible enrolment figures to emphasize my previous statement that much of the talk about keeping all Canadian universities small is entirely unrealistic. I hope we will always have some small universities; but we are in a social situation which is likely to demand that in twenty years the universities in Canada accommodate 350,000 students. To do this, there must be a considerable number of large universities-perhaps twelve to fifteen universities, each with more than 15,000 students. This is the trend, and I believe it to be an irreversible one. It is in any case foolish to refer to large universities as if they were monstrosities. Our concern, to which I will return in a moment, must be to find means to permit a large university to maintain its proper standards and integrity. I want now to speak brieHy about another aspect of the assumption made about universities and students: namely, that the primary function of a university is to teach students. Perhaps I can helpfully introduce what I have to say by referring to two books having almost identical titles but published just about one hundred years apart. One is the famous statement by Cardinal Newman on The Idea of a University, and the other is a recent book by the brilliant Karl Jaspers. On many points the authors agree; their differences represent the great change that has taken place in the last century in the concept of a university. For Newman, a university was a select society where the great blessings of liberal education were to be absorbed and assimilated in a manner that produced the English

80

The New University

gentleman. Jaspers represents the more recent view that all persons of ability should have an opportunity to attend university. Newman thought of a university as a centre in which the great truths of the past were learned, where discussion between students and their masters sharpened the intellect, where students acquired wisdom and conviction. Beyond this, Newman did not go. And it is interesting to observe the degree to which his view prevails in our society today. It is not that one objects to Newman's view. It is that his statement is incomplete as a statement of objectives for the modem university. Jaspers' book, on the other hand, gives considerable attention to research as a prime function of a university. His fundamental concept of a university is that of a framework within which is nourished man's will to know, to experiment, to discover, to find truth, and understanding of the truth. A university is not a centre in which merely what is known is considered; it is a community consistently exploring the frontiers of knowledge. Students are to engage in this process with their teachers. A university teacher, like a university itself, is to be judged not merely by what he gives to his students, but by what he contributes to the world of knowledge. And it is the view of many that those universities which contribute most to the world of knowledge give most to their students. If now we consider not merely teaching but also research as an essential function of a university, we have a new and different component to consider in answering the question "Are our universities growing too large?" In what way does size affect the quality of research in a university? Again, there is no adequate answer. But it can be stated emphatically that there are some respects in which it is extremely difficult to do good research in a small university. One essential, for example, is an adequate

Agency

81

research library-a library of probably 1,000,000 volumes or more, with a wide variety of periodicals, and with suitable micro-film services. Such facilities and services are almost impossible to obtain in a small university. Small size should not necessarily prohibit the provision of adequate laboratory and scientific equipment, but in fact it does seem to do so. The best scientific research is to be found in universities with graduate schools which provide student assistants and student projects; and graduate schools are only found (or should only be found) in universities that can provide enough specialists in each discipline to ensure that the graduate student can have good teaching in all branches of his field. A graduate student in zoology, for example, should be acquainted with at least five, if not seven, of the specialties in zoology, and Professor A. S. P. Woodhouse says that a doctoral programme in English clearly requires "a staff affording one specialist in each of ten principal divisions of the field." He adds: "... even if we assume that in some instances one man might be able to double in two divisions, it would be a lucky accident that would provide this minimum with less than seven or eight persons in the senior and middle ranks." Large numbers of specialists in a particular discipline or department can only be provided in large universities, and, regrettable as it may appear to some, significant scientific research is gradually becoming the prerogative of these large universities. I frequently hear colleagues speak about the research they would do, or the book they would write, if only they were located in one of the small rural universities. But if, in fact, one studied the writing of academic men in Canada, one would find, I believe, a higher production rate in the large urban university than in the small college in the

82

The New University

hinterland. The large university, with its built-in competitiveness and tension-producing committees, does provide a stimulating and creative atmosphere which encourages research and a consistent search for knowledge. The inevitable contact, direct or indirect, with numerous scholars; the endless searching questions asked by graduate students; the forced awareness of the need to be alert in order to keep alive intellectually-these are all part of the large university. I remember a professor of psychology at my undergraduate school leaving for a large university because, he said, "I haven't had a chance to talk with another psychologist in twelve months." I remember a colleague telling how much more difficult he found it to write while teaching at a small university: "When I was at the large university," he said, "I could go along the hall and speak to any one of five men interested in the same specialized branch of economics as I am. Now I send them a draft of a paper or idea I have, but by the time I get a reply-if I do hear at all-some of my desire to pursue the project is gone. " When the research function is considered, a large university has a distinct advantage, and since good research and good teaching are often related, one cannot claim categorically that there is not good teaching in the large university. I have been suggesting that large universities, at this time in history, are necessary and desirable. Does this mean that there is no place for a small college or university? Indeed not! The experience of centuries tells us that there is something unique and invaluable to be found in the small college in which intimate contact between professor and student, and between student and student, is possible. Just as it would be foolish to believe that there will not be large universities in Canada in the future, so it would be equally foolish to say that there should be only large uni-

Agency

83

versities. We need both large and small univers1t1es. Indeed, we need variety not only in the size but in the ethos of our universities, so that various talents and potentialities may be nourished in appropriate settings. But we should not ignore the fact that small· universities will have special difficulties in the future. For example, small independent colleges and universities will have, I think, difficulty recruiting and retaining first-rank scholars, for some of the reasons I have already mentioned. It seems to me that it will be essential for a small university to be affiliated in some way with a larger university which will provide for more adequate library and research facilities and for close contact between colleagues in the same discipline. This may be achieved by groups of colleges affiliated, as at Oxford, or by branch universities, as at Victoria or at Calgary. 1 I do not believe that good men can be kept teaching in small colleges unless they are given some of the advantages offered by a large university. I hope in Canada there will always be colleges and universities of various sizes, but I believe the future of the small college or university (if it is to have any recognized standard) must lie in some kind of affiliation with a larger university. I believe large universities can be good universities. But there are certain special conditions which the large universities must meet if they are to be so classified. Of the lln our case, at York University, we are planning to build a large university, but with various small units. One unit, for example, will be a self-contained undergraduate residential college for 1,000 students. It will have its own campus, and its own teaching staff. But members of the teaching staff will have access to the research library on the main campus, they may teach a limited number of hours in the graduate school on the main campus, they will participate in faculty seminars in the large university, and, indeed, they may spend one year in four teaching at the main campus, so that they may have the advantages of both types of campus life.

84

The New University

special dangers confronting a large university, let me mention but four. First is the danger of becoming an intellectual shopping centre-a centre made up of innumerable little shops, each independent and isolated from the other. Indeed, a casual glance at the course calendar of many large universities leads one to believe that the whole is the product not of a master plan but of a slow process of historical accretion. Karl Jaspers obviously has a quite different view of how a university should operate-a view which I share. He eloquently describes its primary functions thus: The university unites people committed to scholarly or scientific learning and the intellectual life .... The idea of the university requires the open mind, the readiness to relate oneself to things with the aim of getting at a picture of the whole in terms of one's special discipline. The ideal requires that there be communication, not only on an inter-disciplinary, but also on an interpersonal level. The university, therefore, should enable scholars to enter into direct discussion and exchange with fellow scholars and students. According to the ideal, this communication must be of the Socratic type, posing questions so that men may achieve clarity about themselves and about each other. An atmosphere of communication based on a community of thinking creates the proper conditions for scholarly and scientific work, although such work is ultimately always solitary.

This idea of a university is one by which we may distinguish the good from the second-rate university. There are many second-rate universities, not merely because of their size, but because so many faculty members do not see that, while a university is committed to diversity, it is inspired by the ideal of wholeness. Too many fail to catch the spirit of the whole, to make the sacrifice required to meet their colleagues in debate and discussion, to see the relevance of other disciplines to their own work. Too many administrators forget the concept of wholeness, forget that

Agency

85

their principal function is to create, stimulate, and nourish the community as a whole, that the bringing together of their colleagues in the common search for truth is more important than efficient office-routine or cost-accounting. A university is a living thing when there is awareness of, and inspiration from, the whole. When this spirit is absent, the university is already a decadent society. A second danger for a large university is that it wiH accumulate such a proliferation of professional (if not technical) schools or faculties that it will lose sight of two essentials of a good university. In a good university, the faculty of arts and science is central, and a hierarchy exists that distinguishes basic from auxiliary science; in a good university also, it is kept in mind that the essential question for students is always "why" and not "how." A university that permits professional faculties to rate equally with (let alone have priority over) the faculty of arts and science, or that allows professional faculties to degenerate into technical classes that teach students merely how to deal with problems-such a university is already on the decline. A large university is inevitably under pressure to add institutes, schools, or faculties to its family, and often to teach at a level not consistent with university standards. Clarity of purpose and strength to adhere to this purpose are therefore of special import to it. There is a danger, thirdly, that the emphasis on research and writing in a large university will overshadow the importance of good teaching. It is now often difficult to obtain faculty members who recognize that teaching and research are of equal importance. There is a tendency, because we employ men to teach and promote them for the research they do, for many professors to seek devices by which they can "ease" their teaching responsibilities and find more time for research: they send assistants to

86

The New University

the classrooms and laboratories, they set up easily marked objective questions for examinations, they have a "second office" where they will not be interrupted by students. When this happens, a university is, indeed, open to the charge of "mass producing" students, and it has ceased to perform one of its two essential tasks. The fourth danger is that a large university will accept and incorporate into its life the very worst aspects of popular culture. Why this is so, I do not know, but that it is true, I do not doubt. The smaller universities seem to be able to maintain some standards of taste, but the larger universities give one the impression of congested automobile parking-lots, of innumerable "coke" machines, and of endless untidy corridors. Of this trend Henry Steele Commager says: How unlovely, how discouraging are most of our great urban universities! The ''bookstores" filled with textbooks and athletic equipment and toilet articles. The hideous cafeterias with their clutter and noise and dirt, the food antiseptic but tiresome; service non-existent; popular music piped in relentlessly to drown out all conversation. If there must be music, why not Beethoven and Bach? The residence halls with their CocaCola machines (the impoverished English provide every student with facilities for making tea), and their television, and the students packed three in a room. The student unions designed to look and feel like hotel lobbies, with the local paper (never The Times) and Playboy for sale at the newsstand and a bowling alley in the basement. The student newspaper invariably featuring the most recent athletic contest or the forthcoming prom. You would as soon look at a Hearst paper for news of the world of scholarship as to a university paper! Even the playing fields are closed to all but members of the varsity teams; the best facilities of the gymnasium set aside for teams; the hours of access to swimming pool or squash court rigidly fixed for the convenience of the coaches or of the teams. Commager believes the reason for this state of affairs is

Agency

87

to be discovered in the type of administrator found in large universities. He says: And clearly, most of the bureaucrats who fix the dining hour (five to five forty-five!), who work out complicated techniques of entry and exit from their bookshops, who permit only one door into the library, who assign air-conditioned offices to administrators and cubbyholes to professors, who make so many of the ground rules that control university life, are concerned primarily with their own convenience and not with education. Just as we will never eliminate the gross evils of inter-collegiate athletics until we resolutely give the games and the playing fields back to the students, so we will never eliminate the crudenesses, the anti-intellectual rules, the mucker pose in higher education, until we give the universities back to faculty and students. Inevitably, as univers1t1es become large and complex, work becomes specialized and is assigned to specialists, some of whom understand balance-sheets but not the primary purpose of a university. A large university has to take special care in this respect: it must be particularly imaginative, it must be especially skilled in permitting and encouraging its faculty to give leadership and guidance to the whole of the life of the university. It cannot afford to permit bookkeepers or jukebox-oriented people to dictate the atmosphere in which it will function. These dangers are perhaps greater and more real than I have indicated. A large university can easily become an intellectual slum. It requires constant statement and reiteration of its aims, consistent evaluation of its achievements relative to these aims, and frequent change, to bring practice into line with ideals. And in this effort the whole of the community of learning should be participants.

PART II: TO THE STUDENTS

7. HA IL!

right beginnings

It is important for students before beginning their university careers to discover the ethos, the distinctive character, of their university so that their days as students may be more pleasant and fruitful than might otherwise be the case. What follows is an attempt to depne for the students of the prst class at York the ethos of their university as I wished them to see it.

I am sure you have all heard about the small boy looking at a picture of a huge dinosaur and asking his father why there were now no dinosaurs on the earth. His father replied: "At one time in history, there was a radical change in climate; the dinosaurs were unable to adapt to this change in weather, and they all perished." While this is not quite an accurate account of the disappearance of the dinosaur, it is true that frequently in the history of the universe changes in the physical climate have led to the elimination of whole species. It is also true that many people have found it extremely difficult to adjust to rapid change in the social climate. Indeed some, like dispossessed royalty, or a tradition-bound Colonel Blimp, almost died spiritually in the face of a radically changed social environment.

92

The New University

As first-year students in university, you are now facing one of these radical changes in social environment, for a university is very different from a high school. This is why it is important that you understand the peculiar character of a university, for only if you do will you adjust to it, work effectively in it, and get what you should from it. My own hypothesis is that it is less a lack of intelligence than it is a lack of capacity to use intelligence in a new situation that causes so many failures in university. All of you here, I am sure, have sufficient brain-power to pass a college course, but you are required to use your intelligence in somewhat different ways than you did in high school. We are meeting for these two days so that we may suggest to you some of these differences and what you may do about them. President Lowell said to one of Harvard's freshman classes that a university's "first responsibility is to provide ambition and cultivate a habit leading to self-education." Now, a university has many other responsibilities, some of which I will mention later, but the one underlined by President Lowell is perhaps the one which is most relevant at the moment and may, indeed, be one of the most important differences between high school and university. Our purpose is to help you find your own motivation for learning. We want you to read because you find reading enjoyable and enriching; we want you to study because you believe studying to be valuable and necessary; we want you to work hard because you find satisfaction in hard work. If you enter into your studies in the spirit of, "I will do what I am told to do because that is the way to pass," you will not get that which it is most important for you to obtain in a university; and even though you pass your examinations, we will feel we have failed to provide

Right Beginnings

93

you with what is most essential in education-namely, a desire and a capacity to learn on one's own. The major shift you must make is from one of working because of external pressure by your teachers or parents to working because you yourself believe the work to be important and necessary. Now, you may not see immediately that this is an important difference, but I can assure you that it is of the greatest importance. In the one case, in which you work because of external pressure placed upon you, you tend to read and study precisely what you are asked to read and study- and very little more! In the second case, in which there is internal motivation for learning, you tend to explore, yourself, what requires to be done, doing not merely the "required reading," but that reading which has value and interest for you. In other words, you begin the process of self-education. You begin to learn how to work on your own; how to function when there are no teachers or parents to outline your work for you; how to find, define, and work out the problems with which you will be confronted later in life. There is another difference involved here. At university -at least in a liberal arts university-you are engaged in learning so that you may become a creative and productive person. You are not here to learn how to make a living, although I may say that, if you do become a creative and productive person, you will have no difficulty earning a living in our society, which is already over-burdened with professional technicians. Our function is not to help you with details or with minor techniques, but to help you to find understanding of, and insight into, life in this universe. Somehow, you must find yourself caught up in this spirit, and developing an interest in learning for the sake of learning. If you are able to do this, you will have something infinitely more valuable than a degree-although

94

The New University

you will surely get this as well; you will have what Lowell calls "a habit leading to self-education," and this will provide satisfaction and rewards of the greatest significance throughout your life. At this university, you will find your professors anxious and willing to help you. Indeed, the whole structure of our teaching programme is one which is designed to provide much more help and guidance than you would find in any but a few universities in the world. But we do not intend to treat you as children, urging you to read this book, or insisting that you study another book. We think that you are now sufficiently mature to be treated as adults. We expect you to work out your own programme of study. You will have a good deal of free time, and a good deal of freedom. We expect you to use these intelligently, with due consideration to what you want to get out of university. Don't expect us to tell you when or how to use this freedom; that you must manage on your own. We will guide, but not direct. We will encourage, but not insist. We will help, but not coerce. I want now to talk about learning. Learning in a university is not different from learning in any situation, but I believe that some of you will have a rather different conception of learning than we do, and I should like, therefore, to try to clarify this difference. A few weeks ago, I came across an article by an eminent life-scientist in which he compared learning to the process by which an organism takes in and utilizes food or nourishment. Because this analogy may have some value for us, I want to review it briefly for you. In a physical organism, growth converts food from the environment into body substances in a sequence of four major steps: intake, digestion, assimilation, and final utiliza-

Right Beginnings

95

tion. In this process, the raw materials gathered from the environment are either stored or passed on directly for alimentary processing. Digestible items are broken down chemically to more manageable compounds, which are then screened and sorted into useful and useless varieties. The waste, together with indigestible residues, is eliminated. The useful items, the true nutrients, are circulated to the tissues, whose cells pick what they need, then re-combine and modify it to form intermediary products, already bearing specific earmarks of that organism, some to be re-circulated for use by other cells, some still to be discharged as waste; and, finally, cumulating the synthesis, each cell constructs from this supply pool selectively the substances and structures uniquely characteristic of its own kind. Now this analogy from food-processing applies to the acquisition of knowledge by the individual. An organism never adopts foreign matter outright, but reorganizes and assimilates it to fit its own peculiar pattern, and this principle is equally true for food or for information. If you are to possess knowledge, if knowledge is to be your own, it must first be digested, assimilated, and utilized by younot by your professor, not by some author, not even by a classmate. It must be worked over thoroughly by the unique personality that is you. The great difference between putting food and putting facts into the human organism is that, with food, the process proceeds automatically, without conscious effort on our part, but in learning, in the true acquisition of knowledge, the process does not work automatically: each individual must make an effort if increase of knowledge is to take place. I stress this point because I believe that many highschool students think that listening to lectures and reading books are, in themselves, the equivalent of learning. This is not so. These things are but the nutrients on which the

96

The New University

tree of knowledge feeds, and not until the information they provide has been thoroughly absorbed and assimilated does it constitute personal knowledge. The piling up of various bits of information should pass for knowledge no more than the stuffing of a kangaroo's pouch can be regarded as growth. The difference is indicated by Milton in his appraisal of a man who was, he said, "Deep versed in books but shallow in himself." No, learning and the acquisition of knowledge make very considerable demands upon an individual; not for memorizing or intake, but for the other aspects of growth. You must consciously digest, discarding the useless, assimilating the useful, taking over and using what you know in discussion, in written papers, in action. This is perhaps another major difference you will find between high school and university. Here, we are not content with facts and information. We want understanding of facts-information woven together to provide ideas and theories, insights that come from reflection and speculation, wisdom that results from the utilization of knowledge. If all this seems difficult and strange, let me reassure you. It is not more difficult than high school; it is less difficult, and more fun. (I may be doing the high school an injustice, but I fear not!) What you need to succeed in your pursuit of education is relaxed effort, and not the strained discipline of the route march. I never cease to be surprised to hear one or the other of the world's great sprinters say that the secret of running a fast hundred-yard dash is to be able to relax. If one strains or becomes tense, one loses speed. One must exert effort, they say, but one must also relax. A somewhat similar situation exists in respect of learning. True learning is not the result of intense cramming, of storing up irrelevant bits of information in note-books, of desperate preparation for examinations. Rather does it

Right Beginnings

97

involve contemplation of new information, rejection of the useless, reflection about the relevant, and the relation of new information to other knowledge, so as to make use of all in exposition. And once you achieve the capacity to relax in doing this, you will find learning is more enjoyable and far more productive than memorizing. You may remember John Masefield said in one of his poems: Best trust the happy moments. What they gave Makes man less fearful of the certain grave, And gives his work compassion and new eyes. The days that make us happy make us wise.

So I suggest to you that, instead of straining, you relax; instead of memorizing, you reflect; instead of worrying about how to please a professor, you find satisfaction in reaching your own goals; instead of thinking of your study as a trial, you discover that your days at university can be ones of great happiness. Let me conclude with a few remarks about teaching, for university teaching requires some special understanding on your part. First of all, teaching is but one of the two major functions a university performs, and it is important for you to realize that equal in importance to teaching is the academic man's endless search for new knowledge, insight, and wisdom. A university is, in a sense, a trustee of the world of knowledge; it is concerned with preserving and expanding the world of knowledge. All good professors are dedicated to this end, and a good part of their life is given to personal study. You will find the academic staff at York University able and willing to give you a good deal of time in class, seminars, and in tutorials; but you, for your part, must understand that they have other obligations as well, and that

98

The New University

neither you nor I should impose on the time they need for scholarly study and research. Such study and research not only permit more effective teaching, they make possible, and will continue to make possible, the production by our academic staff of books and articles of the greatest value to the world of knowledge. Further, a university teacher has two responsibilities in the classroom. One is to present his material to you in an imaginative and stimulating way. A good teacher does not, as I heard one student say, "dish out the same dry stuff year after year in the same dreary fashion." He has a responsibility to keep his lectures alive and fresh and relevant. The result should be lectures of interest and importance. But the other responsibility of a professor in the classroom is one which the casual student does not recognize, and it is one that makes some lectures appear dull to the uninitiated. The responsibility of which I speak is that to the world of scholarship. This requires that the university teacher present his material in context; that he offer it in all its manifestations; that he present the various opinions, his own doubts, and his own convictions about it. I do not suggest that such a presentation needs to be dull, but it cannot be the Bamboyant, the limited, or the sometimes undisciplined presentation which might be expected to be attractive on television or on the public platform. A university lecture takes place within the context of the world of scholarship; it is well to remember this. Indeed, it is useful to be sufficiently conscious of it that one may learn how a scholar approaches a subject. Good teaching is, in many respects, only possible with good students. One cannot teach effectively to a group of sleepy, dull-eyed, listless students. On the other hand, one often teaches well to a group of alert, questioning, and doubting students. You, as students, have a good deal of

Right Beginnings

99

responsibility for whether learning takes place in the classroom or not. Let me read you a brief passage from The Prophet of Khalil Gibran: THEN said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching. AND he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding. The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it. And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither. For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth. Good teaching also requires your participation in expressing yourself, both orally and in written form. I read with interest last year an editorial in the student paper of a Canadian university relating to methods of teaching at that university. The editorial said, in part: "One of the causes of apathy at - - University is the lack of students who have acquired the habit of discussion." The editorial went on to suggest that it was not until the student was in his final year at the University that he had an opportunity to participate in class, and then, the editorial states, "Faced

100

The New University

for the first time in our final year with the problem of articulating our almost non-existent ideas about a work of whose brilliance we are only too conscious, it is small wonder that senior seminars seem apathetic, and that their members are affiicted with paralysis of the tongue." In conclusion, the student editor says: "The difference between a brilliant student and a good one may be a matter of talent, but the difference between an intelligent, creative student and a passive, apparently superficial coffee-shopper is a matter of training and discipline." Now I know but little of what goes on in the university at which this editorial was written, but the main thesis is one that has implications for all of us. It is simply this: part of a student's training in university should be devoted to helping him to express himself effectively, both orally and in writing. This is why you will be asked frequently at York University to write papers, why you will be asked to report orally on your reading, why you will be given the opportunity of participating in discussion at seminars and small group meetings. This is an essential part of your training. May I say one word about the matter of participating in class discussion. We do not expect you will be very skilful in such discussions at the beginning. If you had already mastered this art, there would be much less need for tutorials and seminars. Both you as students and we as teachers must realize that while you are learning there will be awkward moments, unintelligent questions, irrelevant comments. This is as it must be at the beginning, and I hope that no one will mind it. My own experience with first-year students leads me to make what I am sure is an inaccurate classification: there are students who are extremely reluctant to participate in any discussion, and there are students who talk far too much! The former

Right Beginnings

101

would like to talk, but their fear of blundering compels them to keep silent. Those who feel compelled to talk, talk endlessly, and, unless they are dealt with firmly, they go on and on in an amazing How of verbiage. We expect that many of you are in one or the other of these two categories. It is natural that this is so, and we expect it. All we ask is that those of you in the first category make an effort to participate-and may I suggest an early attempt, for the longer you postpone plunging in, the more difficult it appears to be. And we ask that those of you in the second category begin to think not merely of talking, but of making a disciplined contribution to the discussion. Again, if we learn to make an effort in a relaxed way, if we plan to work hard but to enjoy ourselves, we will find more readily the way to an effective expression of our ideas. May I express the hope that all of you will have many enjoyable and productive days at York University; may your horizons expand and your knowledge deepen; may you, who constitute the first class at York University, establish standards and traditions that will enrich both this University and the lives of thousands of students who will follow you at York.

8. FAREWELL!

right endings

As the last chapter was concerned with beginning university, so this one is concerned with pnishing it. I have "left this address pretty well as I gave it at Acadia University in May, 1960. My first words must be ones of congratulation to members of the graduating classes in whose honour this day is set aside. As I recall a similar day in my own life, I must confess that I felt much too beaten and tortured by examiners and examinations to be able to respond to expressions of congratulation with anything more than a dull and unbelieving "Thank you," or with an idiotic smile that I am sure convinced one and all that someone had blundered in listing my name with others of the graduating class. I can assure you that if you have a similar reaction today you will find that, as the years pass, you will gain perspective and will look back on this as a day which represents considerable achievement. Some of you will remember that John Galbraith gives a good deal of attention and exposition in the first chapter of his book, The Affluent Society, to the nature of what he appropriately calls "the conventional wisdom"-the ideologies of a past generation, now embodied in cliches

Right Endings

103

and myths by endless Convocation speakers. Galbraith says: Any individual on being elected president of a college or university automatically wins the right to enunciate the conventional wisdom should he choose to do so. [Such an official is] expected, and indeed is to some extent required, to expound the conventional wisdom .... Before taking office, he ordinarily commands little attention. But on taking up his position, he is immediately assumed to be gifted with deep insights. He does not, except in rare instances, write his own speeches; and these are planned, drafted, and scrupulously examined to ensure their acceptability. The application of any other test-for example, their effectiveness as a simple description of the economic or political reality-would be regarded as eccentric in the extreme.

Now, Mr. President, I must confess that none of these things has come my way since my appointment to York University. I have not yet learned to expound "the conventional wisdom," I do not have a speech writer, indeed no one in the past six months has even suggested that I now possess deep insight. Perhaps this is justice finding its mark! I thought, Mr. President, that it would be only fair to warn you at the beginning that I have not been sufficiently exposed to "the conventional wisdom" to be able to expound it as a university president should, and without this presidential armour which protects one from saying anything that would excite or offend anyone, I must revert to the traditional device of the professor who, when he wishes to impress his students with his profound knowledge, gives them an examination. I have four questions for senior students today. These I offer to you, the Graduates, as a kind of final, comprehensive examination. If you are able to answer all four questions in the affirmative, you should return to the platform and have your degree stamped with a summa cum laude. If you reply

104

The New University

"yes" to three of my questions, you should feel satisfiedbut not content. If you can reply affirmatively to only two of my questions, I reluctantly agree that you should graduate, but you should feel guilty about it! If you cannot answer "yes" to any of the four questions-or only to one-you have probably been majoring in romance or athletics, or perhaps both, and I think in all justice you should return to the university for at least one year of real work! In other words, I am going to test you on the quality of your education. The answers, you will soon discover, are not related to any course, or to any book; they are to be found only in a broad experience of living and of reflection. But affirmative answers suggest qualities without which you can hardly presume to possess a university education. In any case, perhaps you will see how well you do. But if you find the questions difficult or boring, tum your mind to giving them to your friends or to your teachers. I am sure you will discover they would do less well than you would; and this is always a great satisfaction. 1. My first question is: Do you recognize that your education has just begun and that you must continue learning if you are to be an educated person? Whatever else a university graduate knows, he should have some conception of how much there is to know, and he should know how little he himself knows. In recent years, knowledge has been doubling about every ten years. No man can master more than a few fields of specialization, and no man can keep abreast of developments in his own specialization or profession unless he constantly, consistently, and conscientiously pursues his studies. At university, we should get just a sufficient glimpse of the world of knowledge to inspire in us, not only a considerable degree of humility, but also a keen desire to continue our

Right Endings

105

exploration of this world of knowledge. One recent report on higher education stated the matter this way: The college graduate is not an educated man; he is potentially an educated man. Education is lifelong, and the man who becomes educated is the man who knows how to find out what he wants to learn and how to go on learning it throughout his life. In other words, he is a man who has mastered certain methods of dealing with subject-matter; he is the man who has learned how to proceed.

To this, I would add: he not only knows how to proceed, but he is determined to proceed. So my first question is: Are you aware how much there is to know, how little you know, and are you determined to continue your education? And, parenthetically, have you learned how to study-how to proceed? If you can reply with an enthusiastic "yes" to both the main question and the subsidiary, you have taken at least the first step towards passing my examination. 2. My second question is this: Have you in the past four years brought under serious review enough of the traditional attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on you in the previous eighteen or twenty years? Woodrow Wilson, when he was President of Princeton University, said: "The object of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible." Now there is every justification for such a statement as this. Let me suggest at least one reason. A number of years ago, I was engaged in an extensive study of the nature and contents of the religious beliefs and attitudes of some young people in the United States. One imPortant aspect of this study was our search for persons we considered to be truly religious persons-persons who

106

The New University

were described by William James in his famous work Varieties of Religious Experience as possessing "a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism," and "an assurance of safety and temper of peace, and in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections." Now, of course, it is extremely difficult to identify such persons, and although there were a good many clues, judgment as to who possessed such qualities had necessarily to be largely subjective. However, I should like to tell you briefly what I think was suggested by such evidence as we had. About 5 per cent of the people appeared to possess the qualities that William James spoke about. These people were of various ages, of both sexes, from a wide variety of religious groupings. What interested me was that the only characteristic which was common to all of them was that they had gone through a period of active doubt and searching before they found the philosophy or religious belief that now had meaning for them. I have often wondered since if one can possess any idea or value with conviction if one has not at some time rejected that idea, argued against it, sought to take a position opposite to it. Ideas that are simply taken over from one generation by another soon lose their meaning and vitality. They must be challenged by every new generation, tossed about in intellectual battle, refined, improved. When ideas and values go through such a process, not only do they then have fresh meaning, but those who have worked them over possess them and believe in them. This is what I believe Woodrow Wilson had in mind when he said a university should produce young gentlemen unlike their fathers. I do not believe he meant that there should be a complete ideological and cultural revolution

Right Endings

107

every generation; but I believe he meant that the fixed ideas and habits of every generation should be challenged by each succeeding one. For if I have made my point, it is obvious that each generation must work through its own ideas, if it is to possess these ideas with conviction. And the time for such re-working is when young people are at university, free to think, to explore, to talk seriously with teachers and students. And, if this is happening, one finds an active challenging by students of the "conventional wisdom." So my second question is: Do you have ideas and convictions of your own-not inherited ideas, or ideas imposed on you, but ideas you have thought about, reflected upon, and finally discovered as your own? 3. My third question is brief: Have you learned the discipline of work? I think it was T. H. Huxley who said: "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not .... " I believe this to be profoundly true. I have seen many men of great potential ability who have never fulfilled their potentiality because they lacked the discipline necessary to get down to hard work. For a while, they can get by: indeed, they do so with a kind of halo awarded by their fellow students, who say, "That George is really a brain; he never works, and he always gets A's and B's." Apparently some special virtue is attributed to one who does well without trying. Indeed, so much has this practice become admired that too many students seem to want to do well without trying. Now this is surely a dangerous and pernicious practice. It is true that a university education is concerned with providing knowledge and understanding, and it could be argued that if one can reach a given level of knowledge and understanding without much effort, all should be con-

108

The New University

tent. But a true university, one which, in Cardinal Newman's famous dictum "knows her children one by one," is not concerned merely with the establishment of arbitrary norms that all must reach, but is interested primarily in helping each student to obtain some grasp of his capacities and to begin to move towards the fulfilment of his potentialities. And this requires that each student learn to strive, to struggle, to work, to attain levels of performance related to his own capacities. A major effort of a university must be to produce "disciplined intelligence." This means intelligence that is functional-that is, trained in logic and logical analysisand intelligence that can be used to the full when the occasion demands. In other words, as Huxley suggests, a prime result of education should be a capacity to overcome extraneous distractions and attractions, and to get down to work. Work, of course, brings its own rewards. Laborare est orare: to work is to pray. Indeed, this is so. For devotion to duty is one of the virtues of the centuries. And it is why I ask you if you can answer "yes" to the question: Have you learned the discipline of work? 4. My final question is this: Have you learned to care? By "care," I suppose I really mean "love," although I use the word "care" because the word "love" in our day inevitably seems to involve, if not connote, "sex," and I mean much more than that. Have you learned to care for yourself? Have you learned to care for others? Have you learned to care about Canada? Have you learned to care about apartheid, about people who are hungry, about people who suffer because of human cruelty? Have you learned to care about religion and about ideas of justice and righteousness? If you have not, your education may not yet have begun.

Right Endings

109

Some of you may wonder why I included the question, "Have you learned to care for yourself?" For those of you who want a full answer, I refer you to Erich Fromm's book Man for Himself; but, by way of a brief reply, I would say that I believe that a man who does not care for himself cannot care for others. A man who does not have respect for himself, who does not have a sense of his own dignity, who is not comfortable with the thought of his own nature: such a man cannot understand, respect, or love others. To love oneself does not mean that one is selfish, that one is content, or that one is complacent. It means only that one loves God's handiwork, as seen in oneself and in others. The person of whom we should beware is the person who is unhappy with his own nature and who covers this up with an air of sanctimonious concern for others. He does not really love others. He merely hides his hostility and unhappiness temporarily by pretending to do so. I ask, therefore, if you have come to understand yourself and others, if you have learned to care about yourself and others, if you have achieved concern about the development of the vast resources possessed by yourself and others throughout the world. A sound education should not only stimulate this concern but should provide sufficient insight and perspective so that one understands and knows one's responsibilities and how these responsibilities are to be met. I have asked my four questions, and you, I hope, have provided your own answers. I hope you have all passed, and that you graduate with a clear conscience! If you have not, perhaps it is sufficient that you remember that education is, indeed, a life-long process; you can begin now to meet the requirements of a university education. Education should provide for a greater degree of sensitivity and re-

110

The New University

sponsibility than would be possible, unaided. Indeed, I believe all university graduates in Canada should be able to say, as Gwen Pharis says in "O Canada, My Country": My roots are in this soil, Whatever good or bad, what vain hope or mighty triumph lies in you, That good or bad, that destiny is in me. Where you have failed, that fault is on my head, Where you are ignorant or blind or cruel, I made you so, In all your folly and your strength I share, And all your beauty is my heritage.