INTRODUCTION THE VALUE OF A CULTURAL EDUCATION TO THE BUSINESS MAN Until the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was generally conceded that the aim of education was to train the student for one of the learned professions or to produce a "cultured gentleman." Since the founding of the universities in the Middle Ages, a classical education, in which the writing of Latin and Greek held the most important place, had been the only education considered worthy of the name. Those who had chosen law, medicine, or the ministry as a profession or those whose incomes were large enough to permit them to disregard the necessity of earning a living attended the universities. They wished to become well-read gentlemen. As late as 1827 a report on the curriculum of Yale University stated that the purpose of education was to supply the "discipline and furniture of the mind." In the opinion of a large majority of the educators a systematic study of the Greek and Latin classics accomplished this purpose most adequately. They emphasized the civilization of the past. Consequently few of those who wished to enter the business life of their country or engage in the rapidly developing international commerce sought admittance to the universities. They felt that they could not afford the time for studies which did not directly prepare them for their work. They considered practical experience in commercial houses or upon trading ships far more valuable to them. The industrial revolution and the discoveries in scientific fields had opened new realms of knowledge of which the standardized education took little cognizance. The commercial class, therefore, began to demand a useful as well as a cultural education. The result of this demand was that the universities reorganized and modified their curricula. They failed, however, to satisfy entirely their critics. They were still accused of offering a too restricted education and of failing to give a liberal education. By the middle of the nineteenth century those interested in education found themselves confronted with two questions: What is a liberal education? How can it be obtained? Three groups attempted to answer these questions. The first was headed by Cardinal Newman, the defender of the universities; the second by Thomas Huxley, the defender of a scientific education; and the third by Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture. In 1852 Newman published his discourses to the Catholics of Dublin under the title of Idea of a University. A liberal education, he held, was one which cultivated the mind and produced a gentleman. It could be obtained by the study of the relationship of the various branches of knowledge to each other. Knowledge should be pursued for itself, for the pursuit of knowledge led to the discovery of truth. The enlargement of the mind through the discovery and contemplation of truth was the aim of a liberal education. At the conclusion of his seventh discourse Newman summed up the practical value of such an education as he proposed. If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to the particular professions on one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. But a university training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm. Huxley dealt with the subject of education in nearly twenty addresses many of which were delivered before audiences composed of college men. He expressed his chief theories in A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It, an address to the South London Working Men's College in 1868, and in Science and Culture, an address delivered at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's Science College at Bir |