Oral essays on education Dr. Henry Steele Commager
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The following tape recorded program is distributed through the facilities of the National Association of
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educational broadcasters.
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Oral essays on education a dynamic radio series designed to present leading
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personalities of our society as they attempt to discover the scope of problems which confront modern
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education. This week Dr. James and Tara of Michigan State University College of
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Education will interview Dr. Henry steel comment you're a professor of history at AM Hearst
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in this interview Dr. commenter describes the growing X alteration of what he calls the
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public enterprise.
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And now here is Dr. Tara.
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You know and when we talk about better colleges and universities in
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this country and our society expects us to train scholars being
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people in high schools and colleges and universities the higher education atmosphere in
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society expects us to train scholars. And you're pointing out you don't train
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scholars scholars do a good deal of this themselves they develop themselves.
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Society also expects us to develop
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technicians to develop people who can operate in societies context and
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thus we arrive at vast numbers of students who does the actual
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supporting of this training. Is this is a responsibility of
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society is it at the local level in our country is it at the state level is it at the national level or is it
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at all levels.
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In the long run the support to all forms of higher education will be
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increasingly a public responsibility. Already the major part
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of education is public in one form or another. More students go to state or
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municipal colleges and universities and they do it to private and I have no doubt whatsoever that that
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proportion will increase as it is even now increasing rapidly. I look upon
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this development with the and with that women. And I think in the long run
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the public public support and education
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will do quite as well as private support of education as far as the production of
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scholars scientists technicians and others as concerned. What.
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What impresses me very much is that in almost all old world countries that are
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have our traditions and the
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overwhelming part of support to higher education comes from the state.
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All higher education in Scandinavia in Switzerland in
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Holland comes from the states almost all higher education in Britain
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and that includes Scotland and Northern Ireland as well comes from the state.
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Well these countries have learned and what we have yet to learn.
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Is to dive orse financial support to higher
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education from either educational
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control or administrative control and
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European governments either municipal or national do not
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in fact interfere in any respect with the academic content of
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education with the academic direction of higher education.
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Nor do they generally interfere in any improper way. Not much in
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proper ways with the administrative control. I'm persuaded that
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we must learn to give our government controlled
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institutions government supported institutions the same degree
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of educational freedom and of administrative freedom that private
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institutions now enjoy. I see no reason why that can't be done.
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If the English can learn it we can learn it if the Danes and the Swedes can learn this lesson we can learn this
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lesson. It means if it means improved and
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profit it means that it attracts first rate people to universities
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and able to function efficiently. It is something that I think the American people
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will support once they understand what is involved in the issue of
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relative independence for their state supported institutions.
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Let's discuss this relative independence for a moment because I think this is a
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crux of probably one of our greatest problems in education in this country.
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If you notice the tendency to apply business commercial or industrial
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or government operations standards to education. Have
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you noticed that we apply the bookkeeping know Hala that we've developed through years of
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experience this way do you notice that we attempt to put this upon educational.
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Oh yes administrator is inevitable that a business society should apply the standard
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to all education not only to public education or publicly control but even to
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private. And nothing is more interesting than to notice the growth of administration in
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private institutions Parkinson's Law works as inevitably in private as it doesn't
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public institutions the administrative tail tends to wag the
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academic dog at private as well as at public institutions.
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What it is very difficult for Americans to learn committed as
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they are to the philosophy of the IBM machine as it
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went was very difficult to learn is that in the realm of scholarship of
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Science of Learning of art of philosophy of all of these things you
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have to have some degree of not only of less a fair you almost have to have
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some degree of Anneke some degree of chaos some looseness at the
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joints. You simply can't impose
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these rigid administrative standards of one kind or another on
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first rate scientific minds first rate
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first rate artistic firstrate philosophical minds. A great thing to learn in
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every good college and university learns it is that when you get first treat people you really have to leave them alone.
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You can't badgered them all the time you can't waste their time filling out forms.
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You can't require them to waste too much of their time and energy at on committees
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or at meetings. These things are important and have to be done. But as
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soon as you invade the realm of science or scholarship or of
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learning in general with these matters you know you are being very
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wasteful. And the thing to do is to realize that
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the price. One pays for a bit of administrative chaos is not too high a
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price if you get first rate scientific attract first rate scientific brains and
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keep them a first rate artistic brains and keep them. I think that lesson
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can be learned it's not too difficult a lesson has been learned at Oxford and Cambridge is
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learned at Upsala and I don't bagus learned at Paris from Bologna it can be learned and
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it's learned at Harvard in Chicago and can doubtless be learned at Michigan and California as well.
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There seems also an easily identifiable tendency to apply the same kinds
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of machine based standards for the selection of students. Somehow we seem
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to have gotten into the drift of saying already moving in the
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direction of saying we can apply the standardized IBM
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processes that you were referring to here for our selection of students capable
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students in certain areas capable in other areas and seem to apply a tendency to
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say all right you need to do this and we need to encourage you to do this well you another
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you do something else. Do you find this tendency disturbing at
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all I do and I believe you do too.
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It's disturbing I can see how it's grown up in but it's perhaps inevitable at a certain
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level. Again we have to always remember that we're trying something no other country ever
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tried. We're trying experiments in mass education and Oxford and
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Cambridge colleges can interview every student. But American state universities
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can't interview every student and if you have a million or a
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million they have students applying for admission to colleges you probably have to fall back on some kind of
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mechanical devices at least in a preliminary fashion. All mechanical
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devices when applied to human bein's are not only fallible they're pernicious.
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And if we keep this in mind we will I think work out as
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auxiliary devices and methods to deal with the problem
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of admission and not only of admission but of direction in counseling once a
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student gets into the college and the university the experience
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of many institutions that have studied the problem
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of admission and of subsequent
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careers of students admitted goes far I think to cast grave doubts on
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the validity of most of the purely mechanical
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methods for detecting talent at an early age or for
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developing aptitude. And I think all of us deeply distrust
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the over reliance on these mechanical devices. That we here at
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Amherst for example and many other colleges as well rely not only on
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mechanical indices but on such things as written essays which
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indicate something of ability to handle English and something of ability to think in various other
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various other abilities as well. Ideally I think we must try to interview
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students or have counseling activities in the high schools which can
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which are so skillful that they can be reliable and be accepted by the
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universities in the colleges of the country. I see no reason why that should not be developed
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at the high school level.
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Let's turn our attention then for a few minutes here to away
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from the students slightly and toward the teachers now realize you can never separate student and
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teaching function because they are one in the same really. But if we can let's talk about the
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teachers with there's several million students
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who made the comment earlier that we need several hundreds
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thousands whatever it may be the ratio we don't yet know of capable
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qualified scholars to perform the teaching function. No these are
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not scholars in general these are scholars specifically in teaching. How are
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we going to get this sufficient number what in our society prevents us
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from having a supply of teachers coming right along with the supply of students.
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Well I want to give a sort of a two part reply to that first. We aren't going to
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find sufficient number of first rate scholars therefore as I said earlier we must find some
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substitute. The colleges and universities can do some things I'm
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quite convinced to cut down on the number of scholars they will are going to
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need and colleges all suffer from. Our universities suffer
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from too great illusions the illusion that everything can be taught instead
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of learned and the illusion that it's a responsibility of every school to teach everything.
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So that any any university in America that has any
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idea of itself as a first rate institution believes it has to teach and
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preach austerity in Chaucerian Elizabeth and restoration 18th
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century the Tory and twentieth century and perhaps a special called chorus and
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in Joyce and Yeats as well. And you know any European
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university tries to do these things and there is one professor of history at many
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European universities. There were two or three professors of literature. We teach too much and we
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teach too many subjects we cover too much ground we forget libraries are they are one thing
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we've got to do is cut down on the coverage and other thing we've have to do is develop far more
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rapidly than we are now doing. We now pay lip service only the kind
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of an inter university and into a college co-operation so that
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if one institution in a state does classical archaeology all of its rivals
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don't think they too have to teach can develop classical archaeology there aren't enough to go around.
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There are enough Sanskrit scholars or enough archaeologists to go around and there's
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got to be a concession here. One
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institution to another just as there is in library field but having said that these are
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comparatively minor improvements that can be made.
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We'll have to realize there aren't enough classicist and we will have to do something about it.
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About conceding the teaching of classics to those
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institutions that have adequate libraries out of facilities. But aside from that how are
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we going to get people into first rate people into teaching at the college and
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university level. Now that is a very
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very complex problem it's not. Certainly it's not just a problem
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of money. You aren't going to in the long run the universities
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