THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE COLLEGE 83 



activity and initiative on the part of the student and greater freshness 

 of response and cooperation in general. 



The best methods, however, and the best results from college work 

 can only be obtained when all college students and professors are 

 engaged on some real, useful work instead of busying themselves with 

 mere exercises. The tragedy of college life as seen by the up-to-date 

 educator is that we in many cases are attempting to train for life 

 activity by a series of exercises that can be regarded only as remote 

 approximations to actual activities. This fault shows not merely in 

 the college of liberal arts, but, where one would least expect it, in pro- 

 fessional, and in spite of the rapid introduction of practical work, even 

 in many engineering schools. In four or five years the engineering 

 school as a rule does not undertake to teach engineering, but only to 

 give preliminary exercise work to form in the future the basis for 

 acquiring the profession of engineer. The remoteness of academic 

 training from the real goal to be attained is naturally more marked in 

 the other departments. One phase of this weakness is found in the 

 endless theme work produced by students in compulsory English com- 

 position. As has been wittily said, there is a great difference between 

 having something to say and having to say something, and in the work of 

 composition the student is, indeed, placed in a notoriously artificial 

 attitude. This serves here, however, merely as an illustration of a 

 general defect observed in college work, which in the opinion of the 

 writer results from our failure to demand for our work a social aim 

 and purpose. How to provide real work and real activities for a thou- 

 sand students on the college campus is a matter calling for some exercise 

 of ingenuity. I must content myself with a single illustration of the 

 work that might engage the scholarly activities of our undergraduates. 

 The need of good translations of French, German, Italian, Spanish and 

 other scientific works, our college and university men will readily join 

 with me in recognizing. With, let us say, five hundred students in 

 French, six hundred in German and a proportionate number in the 

 other foreign languages, something of social value could surely be done 

 in this matter under the direction of capable instructors. The transla- 

 tion last semester by eleven students in one of my classes of a complete 

 French book of over three hundred pages opens up a vista of possibili- 

 ties of real cooperative work of public importance. 



If we held consistently to a distinct social purpose, most of the 

 valid criticisms one hears of the college would be met. One of the 

 severest critics of higher schooling of all sorts complains especially of 

 the lack of effort at moral improvement. He emphasizes the futility of 

 the college in helping the young man of limited means in the funda- 

 mental social matter of earning his own living. Others join him in 

 pointing out the tendency of some of the colleges to become mere play- 



