THE SOCIALIZATION OF TEE COLLEGE 81 



representatives of the alumni. This is the cabinet of the academic 

 state. The second, congregation, consists ideally of the teaching force 

 of the university. It has important legislative powers. Convocation 

 is made up of the M.A. alumni who have maintained close relations 

 with their alma mater. This body chooses the chancellor of the uni- 

 versity, exercises the right of veto, elects members of Parliament. Even 

 this scheme is now undergoing reform along even more democratic lines. 

 How far behind we are, with many of our colleges and universities 

 governed by a secret conclave of wealthy men and a president not 

 responsible to the teaching force or to the alumni ! 



To prepare citizens for a democracy the organization of the college 

 itself must be democratic. If it be true that we learn to do by doing, 

 the student should learn at college to be a citizen of a free state, not 

 alone by precepts or academic instruction, but by the experience of 

 membership in a free college community. Wherever there is an absence 

 of social aim and organization on the part of college officers it is little 

 wonder that the student body is lacking in purpose and does not rise 

 above a community consciousness of a very primitive sort. With the 

 colleges filled with the right social spirit the students feel themselves 

 the members of a great republic of letters, or rather, of a democracy of 

 science, possessed of a truth too vital to be merely individual and aca- 

 demic. The utilization of the ethical and social life of the school as a 

 means of moral education, which, since Arnold's day, has been a recog- 

 nized feature of the great English public schools, where, as Haklane 

 remarks, English boys are permitted and encouraged to govern one 

 another, is still almost unknown in some of the American colleges. If 

 the president and the professors take the students into their confidence 

 in the discussion of general aims as regards the welfare and progress of 

 the people, then the corporate life of the school can be organized on a 

 higher basis, discipline becomes more and more self-discipline, and 

 anti-social types feel themselves condemned by the judgment of their 

 peers in academic standing. 



A measure of the change for want of which many American insti- 

 tutions of higher learning are suffering to-day was wrought out in the 

 German universities by Fichte and others over one hundred years ago. 

 It can be described briefly as a greater measure of freedom, spontaneity, 

 self-activity. One should not, however, forget that increased freedom 

 must mean an increased sense of responsibility and that self-activity 

 must be activity of social import under social stimulation. When the 

 members of the college understand their true social end and aim, 

 athletics will occupy a more subsidiary place, and our institutions of 

 higher learning will be more than mere clubs for wealthy young men. 

 It is only in the absence of the enunciation of serious purposes that the 

 college shows the tendency to triviality and puerility of which some 



vol. lxxxii. — 6 



