Address in Praise of Founders

"Encaenia 1884. Dr. Harrison's Opening Address" The University Monthly III, 4 (June 1884): 53-56.

May it please your Honor, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Senate:

Ladies and Gentlemen,—

Each year in its flight carries away with it something we held most dear. It seems but yesterday since the late Honorable Provincial Secretary, after receiving the highest honour this University can confer, stood on this platform, and with that ready and happy eloquence of which he was a master, made his acknowledgements and expressed his determination to strengthen our hands to the extent of his power. It is not so much for this we mourn his loss, not so much because of his power and his willingness to aid us, as for the fact of his human-heartedness. Who of the large circle of his acquaintance ever lost a friend without finding in the Daily Telegraph some words of Christian sympathy from the pen of this ready writer; words that could never come from a man who did not feel for others. Such a man must not pass from us without our turning to "bid fair peace to to his sable shroud."

During the past year this College has lost its first and oldest graduate. Though he lived to the extreme of life, his memory to the last, undimmed by time, delighted to recall the favourite academical studies of his youth. Two other forms sad memory will not allow us to forget at this Encoenia, both young, both in their time Douglas Medallists of the Collegiate School, both honor men in College, and one the distinguished leader of a distinguished class. They are gone--"the blind fury, with the abhorred shears has slit the thin-spun life," but their good name remains and their good actions "blossom in their dust."

Since Christmas the lectures of this University were suspended to enable two of the professors to attend in St. John the funeral of one endeared to them and to a wide circle of devoted friends by the candour and constancy of his disposition, by the hospitalities of his once happy home, and by the stainless purity of a life of faith and of good deeds done in secret. Alas! the heavy change when precious friends are suddenly hidden from us in the night of death.

Once more it has fallen to my lot to give the address imposed by custom in praise of the founders of this University; once more then let us praise the founders. This building itself, beautiful for situation, is their enduring monument, and the fine class of graduates, who are to leave to-day the halls of their Alma Mater, bespeak the praises of the founders far more effectually than any words of mine. Stone walls do not make a college. Far more sacred things are entrusted to the Senate and Faculty of this University. These sacred things are chiefly three—the good morals of the College, its scholarly repute, and its wholesome discipline. Just as the hopes of ancient Israel used to centre in the safe-keeping o f their sacred ark, so it seems to me the hopes of New Brunswick ought largely to centre in the safe-keeping in our Provincial University, of the tables of morality, of the manna of science and literature, and of the rod of that ancient sage called discipline. If, while the general character of our students is good, there be any ardour of industry in the pursuit of knowledge and a prompt obedience to the rightful authority, then, indeed, we are praising the founders. But if we fail in any of these three essentials; in morality, or in scholarship, or in discipline, then the days of our usefulness are ended, our halls will soon be deserted, and our founders may rise in judgment to condemn us. The greatness of the responsibility resting on the Senate and Faculty appears the moment we reflect upon the fact that what New Brunswick may legitimately hope for to-morrow depends upon how she is educating her children to-day. A great Greek statesman, in an oration at the funeral of the young Athenians who had perished in the Samian expedition, said that the commonwealth loses by the destruction of its youth what the year would lose by the destruction of the spring. Now, the intellectual destruction of the youth of any country by fifties and by thousands, year after year, in colleges and schools, may be caused by errors in education, and these errors may be made by men in authority whose intentions are good.

No errors, therefore, should be more unsparingly criticised than errors in education. Errors in education are unsparingly criticised in other communities. Other communities have discovered by bitter experience that the world is yet very far indeed from anything like a perfect science of education. From England, from Scotland, from the United States and from Ontario is heard the voice of dissatisfaction with existing methods. "We attempt too much in education," says one of her Majesty’s inspectors of British schools. "We have not time or strength to deal with half of the matters which are thrown upon our minds, and they prove a useless load to us. There is a fatal want of proportion between what we put into our minds and their real needs and powers. This want of proportion is the great obstacle to progress. The moment we pass beyond the acquisition of reading, of writing, and of calculating, there is no clear, well-grounded consent as to what is to be taught, how much, and how?" In the course of a lecture in the Philosophical Institute of Edinburgh in 1882, a common-sense medical man told his intellectual audience the following practical home-truths : "Too many things are taught at the same time. Think of an undeveloped brain getting up book knowledge on ten different subjects. The cramming up of the dry facts of these many subjects is in most cases a weariness and pain, while the intelligent study of them might be a pleasure and a lasting profit. Let parents occasionally take their children's night tasks and do them themselves. It is enough to make one despair of the inherent reasonableness of human nature to think of the time and toil that are given in Edinburgh to the learning of things for which there is no inherent capacity in the learner." 

It was my good fortune to attend in Boston, in 1880, a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At that meeting a committee, appointed the year before, made a formal report of the results of their inquiries into the kind of science-teaching done in the public schools of the United States. From that report I make the following extracts: "The constitution of the public schools is well fitted to impress the public with the idea that there is much done in the schools. There is a prescribed routine of operations and a display of order that is admired. But teacher and learner are subordinate to the system. It is machine work, and machines make no allowances. In the graded schools, just in proportion to the perfection of the mechanical arrangements, individuality disappears. Special original capacity, the main thing, counts for nothing." The foregoing strictures were made on the general working of the public schools of the United States. Their opinion of the way science was taught was still more unfavorable. "The pupil," they said, "does not know the subjects he professes to study by actual acquaintance with the facts, and he therefore becomes a mere passive accumulator of second-hand statements. ... We would not raise a finger to extend the present teaching in the public schools of America." Such was a report on the public schools of the United States by specially chosen men of science. Let us hear a voice from Ontario. An able writer in the Toronto Week of March 13th, 1884, deriving his knowledge from the official blue book of the educational department, informs his readers that "in the remarks of the Inspector of Schools are found statements and opinions that go far to prove that elementary education in Ontario is confessedly a failure." 

Thus it abundantly appears that errors in education are freely criticised in other communities. How has it been in our own New Brunswick community? If I were to characterize the last decade of our educational history and literature I should say it was a period of exaggerated laudation. I am thankful that our new Chief Superintendent has, by his first report, introduced an era of rational criticism. Wise men have discovered long ago that in the search after truth "the first thing is to invent a system and the second thing is to be disgusted with it." The facts of experience are the true test for educational theories, and tried by this test let the disappointment of parents who have in their own children given the system a faithful trial, let the mental vacuity, hatred of books and habits of idle reverie that have too often resulted from going through the four highest grades of our common schools, be set over against the exaggerated laudations of our school system, which have been constantly sounded in our ears by men who have never tested the system by watching for years its effects on their own children. So far have we been from anything like a rational criticism of educational affairs that in an opening address at the Teachers' Provincial Institute we were gravely told that no man was competent to express an opinion about the prescribed course of study in the common schools unless he had studied psychology and physiology, and I know not what beside. All parents have a much simpler and surer test in their children, and tried by this test much of the criticism which I have quoted as having been expressed in other communities is applicable to our own. An educational system may look well on paper, and so do the garden shrubs and trees with tempting fruit— pictured in the books of those nursery men who yearly invade New Brunswick and carry off our money, leaving trees, the fruit of which is scanty and utterly disappointing to our hopes. Time, which discovers all things, has discovered that a great mistake was made in abolishing the Superior Schools of this Province, and there is general rejoicing over their restoration to us by the legislation of the last session.

Time has discovered that the ranking of the schools on the basis hitherto prescribed has tended to encourage mechanical work rather than intelligent teaching, and there is a sense of relief since it has become a thing of the past. Time will discover to all observers what lengthened and painstaking personal observation has already made painfully obvious to a few, that somewhere in the two years which are spent in grades five and six of our common schools one year of the precious lifetime of the school children of New Brunswick is absolutely lost and worse than wasted. We ought not to flatter ourselves that we have reached the goal of educational perfection, or that New Brunswick is happily exempt from the evils and failures in education which are complained of in England, in Scotland, in the United States and in Ontario. If we are to march prosperously up against the Ramoth-Gilead of ignorance we must abandon the vogue which has hitherto prevailed in educational matters and substitute rational criticism for exaggerated laudation.

It remains that I should say a few words about our Provincial University. "It would be an unfortunate day for New Brunswick when she could not support a Provincial University." These words fell incidentally from the lips of one of the members from the County of Carleton during the discussion on the School Bill before the House last winter. It was extremely encouraging to hear a plain man from the country, whose public policy has always been one of the strictest economy, generously recognizing the claims of the higher education on the Provincial Treasury. A kind word from a cautious public man at a critical time goes a great way, and although I am personally unacquainted with the honourable gentlemen, I beg to thank him on behalf of the University for his simple and clear enunciation of an important truth at the right time. It had been urged not long before in the House against the University that at the previous Encoenia we had only nine graduates, and of these six were from Fredericton. Perhaps the objection is sufficiently answered by the fact that this year there are twenty graduates, representing seven different counties, whilst among our juniors and freshmen we have also representatives from five other counties. In short, out of fifty students there are ten from Fredericton, leaving forty for the non-local attendance. It might be further remarked that the number of graduates at Dalhousie College this year is precisely nine, yet no one considers this fact to argue anything against Dalhousie.

Another objection urged was that the University exerted but little influence on public thought and sentiment. On educational matters it may be the imperative duty of the officers of instruction in the College to express their matured convictions, but it seems to me that we should not be called upon to deal with the other questions of the hour in a noisy, public, or contentious manner. It is no part of our duty to strive, or cry, or cause our voice to be heard in the street or on the platform of public debate. Our College work is a silent work, and in general the more silently it is done the better it is done. The influence the University exerts on public thought and public sentiment comes when her graduates engage in public life. Our Alumni orator to-day, on whom we look with pardonable pride, affords a notable instance of what a professor can do when he descends from his professorial chair, flings aside his college gown, and enters boldly into the arena of political gladiators and social reformers. But, alas! the professor who on the public platform has learned to drink the intoxicating draught of popular applause soon finds the pure waters that flow from the Pierian Spring all too insipid. Forthwith he forsakes the student's bower and is lost to the University. But another objector made at the same time the assertion that a Provincial University does not have such a hold on the affections of the people as a denominational college. In examining an assertion of this kind one is forced to ask who are "the people." For the objection against which I am contending to be at all true we must understand the term "people" to mean not all the people of all religious denominations, but some of the people of one religious denomination, and thus limited the assertion is undoubtedly true, but the limitation deprives the objection of its intended force. It is to me as clear as the light of noon day that, whether our college is denominational or not, if we manage our students well and teach them well, equipping them properly for the battle of life, each graduating class will spread the fact like wildfire, and their affections will cling to the Alma Mater who taught them how to use the divine gift of reason. But it was asserted last winter that our Alumni have no warmth of affection for their Alma Mater. An assertion of such a character made on the floor of the House of Assembly ought not to pass unnoticed. Every man who takes an interest in the University, and especially every member of the Senate and Faculty, must feel deeply pained by such a statement in such a place. If the assertion expresses the truth there could be no more decisive and crushing condemnation of the management of this College by the Senate and Faculty. I look upon the Alumni as the right arm of the University, and if their affections be alienated from us that right arm is paralyzed. If the assertion is not true then it will be quite in order for the Alumni, at their dinner this evening, to contradict it with proper emphasis, and the contradiction ought to have as wide a circulation as the original assertion.

The objection that our Alumni have no enthusiasm, no warmth of affection for their Alma Mater, even if it were unhappily too true, would not be a valid argument against the existence of this University as a non-denominational college. It would, however, tell with great force against the Senate and Faculty, for nothing but inefficiency on their part could bring about such an unnatural estrangement. The attack made at the same time upon our County Scholarships was an attack upon our endowment itself. It was avowedly hostile, and would, if successful, seriously cripple the University. It would surely have been more generous in a friend of the higher education to advocate the foundation of additional scholarships for other colleges instead of trying to divert from us what he regards as our main source of strength. The same objector urged against us that nobody had given anything to speak of to aid the University. In the first place this is hardly true. It would be unpardonable in me to fail to mention those permanent benefactions which exist in the form of the L. A. Wilmot Scholarship, the St. Andrew’s Scholarship, the Alumni Gold medal, the Governor General’s Gold and Silver medals, and the handsome gift by the ex-registrar of the University of the use of a field most admirably suited for cricket and foot-ball, to say nothing of occasional prizes and sums of money which have been given in cases of close competition to deserving students from the liberal hand of the venerable Metropolitan of Canada. But in the second place, admitting that we get nothing except from the Government, the same is about equally true of University College, Toronto, yet who will deny that University College is a mighty power in the intellectual development not of Ontario only, but of the Dominion of Canada? If young men belonging to the Presbyterian Church, or the Methodist, or the Baptist, or the Congregationalist, or the Church of Rome, or the Church of England, must never, during the generous period of youth, be allowed to measure their mental strength or form the most lasting of human friendships with any but those of their own denomination, what amount of charitable allowance and brotherly love have we a right to expect from them in maturer years? Will they not from sheer misunderstanding too often justify the taunt of the sceptic, "See how those Christians hate one another." The ability of our graduates to cope with the graduates of other universities has been proved on many a well fought field. For instance in the University of Edinburgh, which has recently been celebrating the completion of the third century of its existence, from among 125 Graduates only three graduated with honors of first-class in mathematics, and one of the three was a native of Fredericton, and a former alumni gold medallist of this university. Is it not a strong point in favor of our Provincial University that in the twenty graduates who will in a few minutes stand before us to-day, six different religious denominations are represented? With such men as compose this class for graduates the University has little to fear provided only she be true to the three great interests of morality, scholarship and discipline. If she prove herself a true Alma Mater her sons so far from manifesting any ingratitude will be quick to resent any insult offered to her good name, and while they will strenuously advocate all changes which may give increased vigor to her counsels, they will be ever ready to rescue her from her enemies and to gather round her with the cry "Floreat Academia!"