NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCXCII. JULY, 1889. DISCIPLINE IN AMERICAN COLLEGES. BY PRESIDENT BARTLETT OF DARTMOUTH, PRESIDENT ANGELL OF MICHIGAN, PROFESSOR SHALER OF HARVARD, PRESIDENT ADAMS OF CORNELL, PRESIDENT HYDE OF BOWDOIN, PRINCIPAL DAWSON OF M'GILL, AND PRESIDENT DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. The How far should a university control its students? inquiry relates, of course, to the American, and not the European, university. The latter is quite a different institution from the former. The German university may be summarily characterized as a cluster of professional schools, preceded by the long (seven years) and rigid drill of the gymnasium. Oxford and Cambridge stand in a somewhat similar relation to such an elaborate training as is given at Winchester and Rugby. Of these universities it may be remarked in passing that they are sufficiently inflexible in the courses of study they prescribe and the amount of attendance they require for their degrees, and rigid in regard to some matters of conduct, though lax enough in others. The American university is a very different affair. The name covers a variety of institutions, no one of which fully corresponds to the European one. Some of them have nothing of the foreign university character, but only the gymnasium or college elements, which, indeed, greatly predominate in our largest so-called universities, and are not wholly eliminated from Johns Hopkins. 1 VOL. CXLIX.-NO. 392. manners and life of undergraduates, this question of the amount and kind of control which should be exercised will continue to present difficulties so long as the college has to conduct both gymnasial and university work. As to professional schools, when a part of universities, the same general principles as to work, attendance, and life are applicable as in the college, though, owing to the more advanced years of the students, certain obvious modifications in the application of these rules may be made. There is now a wholesome tendency to more rigorous demands on professional students than have been made in years past. JAMES B. ANGELL, President of the University of Michigan. IN CONSIDERING the problem of discipline in our higher institutions of learning, it is well first to place clearly before our minds the immediate objects which such establishments should have in view. It is evident that these objects must go far to determine the system by which the conduct of youths who attend our colleges and universities is to be controlled. It is very clear that the essential aim of our higher educational establishments is to take youths who have received a considerable training in preparatory schools, who have attained the age of about eighteen years, and have begun to acquire the motives of men, and fit them for the higher walks of active life. To the youth must be given a share of learning which may serve to enlarge to the utmost his natural powers. He must be informed and disciplined in the art and habit of acquiring information. He must also be disciplined in the ways of men, in the maintenance of his moral status by the exercise of his will, in self-confidence, and in the faithful performance of duty for duty's sake. Every influence which tends to aid him in putting away the irresponsible nature of the child should be brought to bear; every condition which will lead him to send forth his expectations and ambitions from his place in the school to his place among men should surround him. While all persons who have considered the problem of higher education will doubtless agree with the proposition that our university authorities should endeavor above all things to bring the youths under their care into the independent position of men, they doubtless perceive that there are very considerable difficulties in the way of attaining this result. The most serious of these arises from the fact that in our larger colleges and universities a great number of young men, generally of imperfect family training, and often from preparatory schools where the influences are not calculated to develop discreet manly qualities, are crowded together under conditions which separate them from the influences which ordinarily control men. The surprise of the new position and the contagious effects of evil example on immature minds breed certain dangers which the authorities of these institutions have to meet by various methods of discipline. Control of some sort has to be exercised by the college authorities. The important question is as to the measure and nature of the influences which may be necessary to apply in order to secure a proper regulation of life on the part of young men. The influences which may be brought to bear in order to secure good conduct on the part of students clearly fall into two classes. In one fear is the motive. The student may be forced to pursue a particular path by the knowledge that punishment awaits transgressions. The punishment may consist of deprivation of various privileges and exclusion from the institution, or in the chastisement which may be secured through the anxiety which his actions bring to his kindred and friends. There can be no question that fear is a powerful agent in controlling the conduct of men. A large part of our social machinery rests upon the fear as to the formal effects of misdoing. It is clear, however, that, while fear may often be valuable as a deterrent, it has not only no moral quality, but by its presence prevents the action of the moral motives. Fear is, unhappily, the necessary element of the laws which serve to hold society together, but all must acknowledge that the real good won by the advance either of the individual man or of society is gained in realms of action which lie quite without the control of this essentially base impulse. It is true that, when we limit the youth's action by anxiety lest his kindred should be distressed by his conduct, we bring into his mind something of a higher motive than purely selfish considerations. Still the element of fear remains, and with it comes the motive to conceal the evil which he has done. It is in this element of concealment, which fear induces, that we find the most debasing effects arising from any discipline which has formal punishments for sanctions. Where young men are under the influence of a discipline that sets immediate personal penalties for offences, the temptation is to hide their evil doings from the authorities and to feel that, if they can secure secrecy, they escape the consequences of their acts. The more rigorous the discipline within the limits possible in a school of high grade, the more this furtive motive is developed. It is my conviction that the more successful the discipline of fear in controlling youths, the more completely it fails to accomplish an educative purpose. Fortunately for the interests of education, there is another way of controlling the conduct of young men in our educational establishments. We may seek to affect their conduct, not to any extent through fear of immediate punishment, but by setting before them the nature of the great task which has brought them to the universities. Once bring a young man clearly to feel that his career in life is fairly begun when he resorts to college or the professional school; let him but conceive that his place in life is to be determined by his conduct in preparation for it, and we bring to bear a set of motives which are morally as high as the ordinary motives of discipline are low in the moral scale. Just so far as the work of a student abounds in suggestions of his work in the world, so far as his teachers by their conduct, as well as by their words, serve to arouse his manly, dutiful sense, the education effects its true end. Every youth who is fitted to be a student in our higher colleges or universities will quickly respond to the stimulus he feels in passing from the disciplinary conditions of childhood to those which are fit for men. If he be in spirit capable of scholarly manliness, we may be sure that his imagination has forerun the conditions he has met in his lower schooling. He has longed for something like the independence and responsibility of manhood; for an advance to the place of trust to which he is bidden. For my own part, I find that the quick response to the freedom which my own college gives to youths is an admirable touchstone of quality. Where a young man does not quickly and eagerly take up the burden of trust which is confided to him, I have little hope of his future. He may blunder a bit, but unless there is something which may be fairly called a passion for the man's duties, it seems to me he is unfitted for higher education. Such a youth best be placed at once in some well-controlled occupation, where he will not have to depend, as the scholar does, upon his own initiative, where he |