Alumni Oration

"Alumni Oration. By Dr. Geo. R. Parkin, C.M.G." University Monthly 18, 8 (May 1899): 211-217. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is with very mingled feelings that one returns after a long absence to a place associated, as this place is to me, with the dreams and ambitions of youth, with the labors of early manhood, with the first thorough awakening of one's own intellectual life, and with years spent in trying to quicken the intellectual life of others. One finds many a place vacant; many a familiar face gone; much change in all around him; most change of all perhaps within himself, as he realizes how new horizons have opened before him; how new interests have crowded out old ones; how new friends have more or less taken the place of those from whom the exigencies of life have separated him; how the impact of one's life on the world's life is made from a different angle and under different conditions. And yet the place where one has lived; and loved, and known the greatest joys of life; where one has suffered bitter loss, and learned too the healing power of friendship and sympathy and divine compassion; where the mind has been stirred by the thoughts of great men, and the character moulded by the influence of good men, must always be consecrated ground to any one who can gauge truly, the deeper things of life.

Yet I hold that it is for the most part unwise to dwell too much on the past, its pleasures or its pains, its successes or its disappointments. The greatest value of the past must ever lie in the use we make of its experience as a vantage ground for work in the present, or as pointing out the best paths of effort in the future.

If we are to make the most of life we must ever be pressing forward to some new mark. And so, though in this place and with the faces of many friends of former times around me, the temptation to reminiscence is great, I must refrain, save so far as it turns upon the business of today.

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But any one who undertakes the creation of a powerful centre of educational influence or attempts to give a new turn to educational effort is beset here in Canada with difficulties which the public does not understand, and I sometimes fear, does not even care to understand. These difficulties are very real ones; they profoundly affect the future of our country; they require clear statement and drastic treatment. I personally feel under a strong obligation to deal with them publicly. Circumstances have placed me in what is the best school position in Canada. In actual money it is the best paid, though by no means equal to the large obligations of the place, nor equal to what I know I can command in other walks of life. But it leaves me free to speak with absolute independence and without any sense of personal irritation in the difficulties of the schoolmaster life.

This is a place, again, where it is proper to speak frankly on such questions. The time, too, is opportune. There never was a period in the history of the country when men concerned for its educational interests had stronger reason to make their voices heard. Canada is manifestly on the eve of very rapid material developments. New sources of wealth are being discovered—new channels of trade opened—the whole West shows the impulse of a new life, and this is beginning to re-act strongly upon the East. The country is entering upon a large national career. One asks himself whether the conditions are favorable for making the higher and intellectual interest of the country keep pace with its material progress, and its widening outlook?

Let me begin to answer this question by making a confession.

I do not think that any one who knows me as many here know me would think me predisposed to take an otherwise than hopeful view of any given set of circumstances. Friends have told me that nothing but a cheerful optimism could have carried me through some bits of work which I have undertaken. Yet I am free to acknowledge that it requires all the optimism that is in me to face the present schoolmaster outlook in this Dominion with a cheerful mind.

I do not wish to exaggerate in saying this, but I desire to state the case so clearly that there may be no misunderstanding of my meaning.

It is rather a commonplace with us to say that we Canadians place a high value upon education. I am sorry to say that it is only in a very modified sense that this claim can be justified. The very first fact which a man runs up against when he begins to organize a great educational establishment is the low estimate which is put upon the teacher's work.

In a theoretical sense what I have said is not true. We are accustomed to hear the most glowing and unquestionably sincere, eulogiums made on the dignity, nobility and usefulness of the teachers' vocation. But facts count for more than words, and the remark is strictly true when one comes to measure things by practical standards. Personal experience may seem egotistical, but it goes more directly to the point than any other. I devoted fifteen years of the most strenuous exertion that I ever made in my life to teaching work here in New Brunswick and chiefly in Fredericton. I am not afraid to stand before this or any tribunal to be judged as to whether I put my best heart into it or not; whether it was successful or not. Yet from the time I was married I had to earn some hundreds of dollars a year in outside ways in the effort to make ends meet in leading a fairly simple life, and I left the place with a heritage of debt which for some time more or less crippled later work. Let us put it down in black and white and say that fourteen hundred dollars a year was the highest pay that the best school position in the Province of New Brunswick and its capital had to offer with which to support and educate a growing family. I remember that this price for one's work was only reached with difficulty. A figure like this serves better than generalities in making the point one is enforcing quite clear to the outside world. You can understand that while I have always felt a great affection for this community, and owe to it some of the greatest blessings of life from other points of view, I have never felt towards it an overwhelming, sense of gratitude for opportunities offered or success won as a teacher.

The real reward lay in the work itself. Even yet it makes my pulse beat more quickly to recall the enthusiasm of those early teaching days, when for months and years I never stepped into that old schoolroom without a sense of elastic joy and hopefulness as I faced the classes of clear eyed boys and girls—more earnest and keen and studious than any I have ever had to deal with since; feeling that I had something to give them; and watching upon their faces the dawn of high intelligence and noble purpose, and the promise of that good work in the world which so many of them have since fulfilled. They do not forget this, I am sure, any more than I do. The hard facts of schoolmaster life, however made the maintenance of this enthusiasm impossible, and when a call to wider, though not higher work, came, I accepted it because I saw no further outlook as a teacher here—but my experience is not singular. In fact I was in a far better position than most of my fellow teachers, and I have little doubt that other workers worthier than I are now in the same position. And this is why I speak so decisively and openly upon the point to-day.

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On my teaching staff at Upper Canada College I have fourteen University men; a sufficient nucleus for a great and powerful public school. Yet I cannot to-day honestly recommend any young man of marked ability among them to remain in the profession, simply because he would be likely to do far better in any other occupation to which he devoted the same energy which he throws into his teaching work. If again I have a youth of exceptional power among my pupils I cannot in common honestly advise him to become a teacher, nor shall I be able to do so until the public mind has been aroused to the necessity for creating adequate educational careers. Can you not now understand why I say that it requires a deal of optimism to make one face the educational outlook of Canada cheerfully? Sometimes I am disposed to assign to the Free School System the blame for such a state of things.

I remember well the high hopes which filled the hearts of those who thirty years ago worked for the establishment of free schools in this Province. While people did not perhaps expect that free education was to create a new heaven and a new earth they certainly did anticipate from it very great results.

Some expectations have perhaps been realized. Statistics would probably show that a far larger proportion of the whole body of citizens know how to read and write; perhaps as large a proportion as in any other country in the world. So far let us rejoice. We have better school houses. That too is a matter for congratulation.

But among other things it was expected that the position of teachers would be greatly improved. There may have been improvement, but that it has been at all on a line with the general advance of the country I emphatically deny.

In Ontario, so far as I can judge, the system of free schools, while it has done immense good over a wide superificial area in giving the elements of education, has distinctly pauperized the popular view of the value of higher education, and of the teacher's profession. This seems a bold bit of criticism for a man to make concerning a Province which has an educational system which has been much heard of through the world. But I make the remark as freely in Ontario as I make it here, and I have stated there publicly the grounds on which the remark is based. You can judge for yourself how far the same conditions exist in this Province. In the first place there has been a steady shifting for many years past towards the cheapest form of teaching work. A prominent Ontario teacher told me the other day that whereas twenty-five years ago in his county teachers' convention men and women were in about equal proportion, the convention now consists of a great mass of women with but a small sprinkling of men. The more highly paid work of men finds little place, and as the average period during which teachers stay in the profession is very short indeed—I think the statistics show not more than three or four years—it is clear that; the major part of the teaching of the province is carried on by young and comparatively unskilled women. Such a state of things evidently offers no ground for educational enthusiasm.

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I know a good many educational men in Ontario, which, as you know, is our wealthiest and most populous Province. I have also a fairly wide acquaintance among men engaged in other occupations and professions. In every one of these other occupations and professions I know at least a few men who feel that they are working out a large and prosperous career, who are able to give their children the best opportunities that money can buy, who find their labours rewarded by the possession of handsome homes, and by a fair prospect of leaving a competence to their children. In the teaching profession I know of no single man either in University or school life of whom I can say the same. I shall be glad indeed if, with the wide publicity that such an address as this may have; some one will be found to rise and contradict me in what I have said, by giving a single striking instance of the opposite. If I am right then I think you will agree with me that here in Canada we have no reason to dwell upon our educational systems with any special tone of self-congratulation.

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It. is not enough to say that the dignity of educational positions compensates for the lack of pay. As a matter of fact the efficiency of the work done must depend to a great extent upon freedom from the sordid cares of life and often upon the exercise of those social influences which necessitate a moderately free use of money. I make here to-day, therefore, a distinct charge against our Canadian life that it offers no adequate prizes whatever in that profession which has perhaps the most positive and immediate influence of all others on the higher life of the country. I say it openly, frankly and boldly because the statement of the truth in the most public way may possibly have its influence for good, and at any rate save us from posing as patterns in educational system.

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I have now briefly, stated my case from the school master's point of view and you will ask me for the remedy; I cannot give it to you. You will observe that though I have criticized the free school system in its results, my attack is really made upon the public opinion which is content with what is cheap in education and with what must necessarily tend to become poor.

This state of public opinion you Canadian people must change. In practice the thing must be done in different ways in different places. At Upper Canada College I hope to do it, if I am permitted by steadily increasing the fees till the school is able to retain permanently the services of first class men and create for them a career. Till this is done we must rely upon the assistance of those who believe in the work and are able to give support. In Montreal vast sums are being generously spent on educational buildings by private donors. My advice there and elsewhere would be to spend less on buildings and more on men. In this Province instead of a score or two of struggling Grammar and High Schools I would have half as many in which men could find a sufficient career. Instead of trying to have a little school house and a second or third class school mistress within easy reach of every New Brunswick farm I would concentrate the work and let the children walk further to a larger school house ruled over by a first class teacher, man or woman.

A great effort was made by the last generation to establish free schools and erect suitable buildings for teaching purposes. Let the effort of this generation be to place the school master in a position worthy of his high calling and vocation. Till we do this we are not laying rightly and truly the foundation of our State.

And now I must turn to another question which I feel bound to discuss here today. I have been told that the need for the existence in New Brunswick of a Provincial University has been questioned, and that even in the Halls of the Legislature the utility of spending from the public funds the comparatively small sum by which this institution has been chiefly supported has been brought into doubt. If this idea prevails then I have no hesitation in saying that public thought on educational questions in this country is sinking to lower levels; and that a determined resistance to such a view should be made by every man who has the higher interests of the country at heart.

If in the spiritual world one can truly say that "man can not live by bread alone" so one may as strongly assert that no complete and elevated national life can be developed unless we provide for the higher intellectual aspirations of its people as well as for its grosser material interests. And there are special reasons why the people of the Eastern Provinces of Canada should bear this in mind.

These Maritime Provinces have played a large part in the nation building work of the Dominion; they hare contributed an unusually large proportion of the statesmen, authors, orators, lawyers, journalists, financiers, clergymen, and men of science, who have influenced the development of Canada and laid fast and sure its political and social foundations. They have also sent abroad a very considerable number of men who have won distinction in the open competition of the world. What has been the cause of an intellectual leadership which I find is remarked and freely admitted everywhere throughout Canada? Something perhaps is due to the strong stock which formed the early population of the country: something to the narrow circumstances which stimulate to exertion: something to that mingling of land and sea climate which seems favourable to mental vigour and alertness: but most of all, I think, to that ingrained regard for higher education and a belief in its advantages which inspired the men who formed, not one, but several centres of Collegiate training throughout these provinces; the men who established this University, and also denominational Colleges like Mount Allison at Sackville, Kings at Windsor, Acadia at Wolfville, and Dalhousie at Halifax. Founded in earlier and poorer days these colleges are monuments of the value which our fathers attached to sound learning. Each one of them has created around itself an atmosphere of scholarship and high thinking which has profoundly affected the community as a whole. Every one of them has justified its existence and the sacrifices involved in its foundation by sending forth men who have deeply influenced the life of the country.

Who will venture to say that these provinces would not be infinitely poorer if the institutions I have mentioned were done away with to- day, and their students and professors transferred to some great University centre at a distance, such as Montreal or Toronto?

So far as securing for us consideration and weight in the outside world is concerned, I believe firmly that the money spent on these Collegiate Institutions have been the most paying investments which, our people have ever made.

There are two classes in a community such as ours to whom a University, the opportunities which it gives for liberal training, and the intellectual atmosphere which it creates around itself are of the utmost importance. I place first those who are poor in world's wealth, but who, nevertheless, are endowed with mental and moral qualities, which, under favorable conditions may fit them for the highest walks of life. To the brilliant son of the poorer farmer or artisan—the young men "whom God has crowned with power but cursed with poverty" a University such as this, which opens wide the doors of knowledge on terms which make them fairly accessible even to the comparatively poor, is a boon so great that words would fail to express it.

A very large proportion of the companions who were pursuing their studies when I was a student here were men who were winning their knowledge in the face of very great difficulties. Several of them, who have since gained distinguished positions in various walks of life, would never, I am confident, have reached the goal of their desires had this University not offered them the opportunity. Shall we deny to those who come after us the advantage which we thus obtained? In this country of increasing wealth shall it be more difficult hereafter for a poor boy to find a way into the temple of knowledge than it was in earlier days when the country was not so wealthy or so prosperous? If such a thing can be then our legislators are forgetting the democratic spirit in which we have been nurtured. They are forgetting, too, that the greatest riches of a country consist in the able men which it produces.

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The higher intellectual life of a country should not be disassociated from the ordinary daily life if it is to have the greatest influence over the latter.

Culture should have at least its roots in the soil where it is to grow.

If a young Canadian of ability and patriotism should ask my advice as to the training which will best prepare him to be of service of his country I would say to him: Study first in the schools and colleges of our own country; go then to the best foreign centres of instruction in your special line of work, learn what England, France, Italy or Germany can teach you; and after that, when your provincialism has been brushed away by contact with larger men and greater affairs come back to Canada to give to it all that you have gained of wisdom and culture.

But I would make the Canadian training very definitely preliminary to the larger one. There is great danger if a man leaves his own country to get culture at too early an age, that he will always be something of an exotic when he returns. He should strike his root deep in his native soil; then whatever is grafted upon that native stem will flourish more naturally and healthfully.

This is one strong reason among many why we should not give up our own Provincial University, with the opportunities which it offers of gaining knowledge amid the surroundings and inspirations of home. Nor need we hesitate in our support because we have not all that greater Universities have.

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No people of my country that I have ever read of in history have more reason to look out upon the world with a large view and hopeful eyes than have the people of Canada to-day.

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Large ranges of ambition, whether at home or in other parts of the Empire, require special training and if Canadians are to take their place easily and gracefully and effectually in the widening spheres which are open to them, they must prepare themselves along the severe paths of higher intellectual discipline. Our people will be wanting in their duty to the best interest of the country if they fail to furnish the means for this discipline.