1958 Fredericton Encaenia
Alumni Oration
Delivered by: Ross, Malcolm M.
Content
"Outlines Dangers" Telegraph Journal (15 May 1958): Extract. (UA Case 67a, Box 2)
Guest speaker at the dinner was Dr. Malcolm McK. Ross, Dean of the English faculty at Queen's University, who contrasted the radical attitudes of the 30's with the conservatism of today, in which he saw a danger of contemplative withdrawal by the individual.
He outlined the dangers inherent in the modern attitude of sneering at conformity without doing anything about it. Conformity was an admitted product of the modern technological age, he said, but those who withdrew into the aloofness of snobbery were not helping the situation.
While it was not good to enter the world of conformity and be destroyed by it, it was just as bad to stay aloof and not communicate. The answer, he felt, was to maintain faith and discover and pursue the permanent elements in change.
Growth which is real does not violate the direction in which it should occur but follows a definite line of continuity, he said. The answer then, for today’s intellectual was "to jump into the waters of your time, but take your beliefs with you."
Guest speaker at the dinner was Dr. Malcolm McK. Ross, Dean of the English faculty at Queen's University, who contrasted the radical attitudes of the 30's with the conservatism of today, in which he saw a danger of contemplative withdrawal by the individual.
He outlined the dangers inherent in the modern attitude of sneering at conformity without doing anything about it. Conformity was an admitted product of the modern technological age, he said, but those who withdrew into the aloofness of snobbery were not helping the situation.
While it was not good to enter the world of conformity and be destroyed by it, it was just as bad to stay aloof and not communicate. The answer, he felt, was to maintain faith and discover and pursue the permanent elements in change.
Growth which is real does not violate the direction in which it should occur but follows a definite line of continuity, he said. The answer then, for today’s intellectual was "to jump into the waters of your time, but take your beliefs with you."
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