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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 425 



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UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE UNIVEESITY 

 OF THE FUTURE.' 



I AM requested to furnish information with reference to 

 the university extension movement in England. It will be 

 desirable that side by side with the facts I should put the 

 ideas of the movement, for, in matters like these, the ideas 

 are the inspiration of the work; the ideas, moreover, are the 

 same for all, whereas the detailed methods must vary with 

 different localities. The idea of the movement is its soul: 

 the practical working' is no moi'e than the body. But body 

 and soul alike are subject to growth, and so it has been in 

 the present case. The English university extension move- 

 ment was in no sense a carefully planned scheme, put for- 

 ward as a feat of institutional symmetry: it was the product 

 of a simple purpose, pursued through many years, amid 

 varying external conditions, in which each modification was 

 suggested by circumstances, and tested by experience. And 

 with the complexity of our operations our animating ideas 

 have been striking deeper and growing bolder. Speaking, 

 then, up to date, I would define the root idea of " univer- 

 sity extension " in the following simple formula: university 

 education for the whole nation organized on a basis of itin- 

 erant teachers. 



But every clause in this defining formula will need ex- 

 planation and defence. 



The term " university extension " has no doubt grown up 

 from the circumstance that the movement in England was 

 started and directed by the universities, which have con- 

 trolled its operations by precisely the same machinery by 

 which they manage every other department of university 

 business. I do not know that this is an essential feature of 

 the movement. The London branch presents an example 

 of a flourishing organization directed by a committee formed 

 for the purpose, though this committee at present acts in 

 concert with three universities. I can conceive the new type 

 of education managed apart from any university superin- 

 tendence, only I should look upon such severance as a far 

 more serious evil for the universities than for the popular 

 movement. 



1 The substances of addresses delivered before the Johns Hopkins and 

 other university audiences, by Richard G. Moulton, A.M., of Cambridge Uni- 

 versity, England. 



But I use the term " university education " for the further 

 purpose of defining the type of instruction offered. It is 

 thus distinguished from school education, being moulded to 

 meet the wants of adults. It is distinguished from the 

 technical training necessary for the higher handicrafts or 

 for the learned professions. It is no doubt to the busy classes 

 that the movement addresses itself; but we make no secret 

 of the fact that our education will not help them in their 

 business, except that, the mind not being built in water-tight 

 compartments, it is impossible to stimulate one set of facul- 

 ties without the stimulus re-acting upon all the rest. The 

 education that is^properly associated with universities is not 

 to be regarded as leading up to any thing beyond, but is an 

 end in itself, and applies to life as a whole. And the founda- 

 tion for university extension is a change, subtle but clear, 

 that may be seen to be coming over the attitude of the pub- 

 lic mind to higher education, varying in intensity in differ- 

 ent localities, but capable of being encouraged where it is 

 least perceptible, — a change by which education is ceasing 

 to be regarded as a thing proper to particular classes of soci- 

 ety or particular periods of life, and is coming to be recog- 

 nized as one of the permanent interests of life, side by side 

 with such universal interests as religion and politics. For 

 persons of leisure and means, such growing demand can be 

 met by increased activity of the universities. University 

 extension is to be the university of the busy. 



My definition puts the hope of extending university edu- 

 cation in this sense to the whole nation without exception. 

 I am aware that to some minds such indiscriminate extension 

 will seem like an educational communism, on a par with 

 benevolent schemes for redistributing the wealth of society 

 so as to give everybody a comfortable income all round; but 

 it surely ought not to be necessary to explain that in pro- 

 posing a universal system of education we are not meaning- 

 that what each individual draws from the system will be the 

 same in all cases. In this, as in every other piiblic benefit, 

 that which each person draws from it must depend upon that 

 which he brings to it. University extension may be con- 

 ceived as a stream flowing from the high ground of universi- 

 ties through the length and breadth of the country. From 

 this stream each individual helps himself according to his; 

 means and his needs: one takes but a cupful, another uses a 

 bucket, a third claims to have a cistern to himself. Every 

 one suits his own capacity, While our duty is to see that the ' 

 stream is pure, and that it is kept running. 



The truth is, that the wide-reaching purpose of university 

 extension will seem visionary or practicable according to the 

 conception formed of education, as to what in education is 

 essential and what accidental. If I am asked whether I 

 think of shop-assistants, porters, factory-hands, miners, dock 

 or agricultural laborers, women with families and constant 

 home duties, as classes of people who can be turned into 

 economists, phy.sicists, literary critics, art connoisseurs, I ad- 

 mit that I have no such idea; but I do believe, or rather, 

 from my experience in England I know, that all such classes 

 can be interested in economic, scientific, literary, and artistic 

 questions; and I say boldly that to interest in intellectual 

 pursuits is the essential of education, in comparison with 

 which all other educational purposes must be called sec- 

 ondary. I do not consider that a child has been taught to> 

 read unless he has been made to like reading. I find it diffi- 

 cult to think of a man as having received a classical educa- 

 tion if the man, however scholarly, leaves college with no 

 interest in classical literature such as will lead him to go on 

 reading for himself. In education the interest is the life. 



