Graduation Address

"Romanticism Tempered by Rationalism" Daily Gleaner (16 May 1975): 11. (UA Case 67, Box 2)

Saying education should be a "reasoned balance of rationalism and romanticism," the encaenia speaker at the University of New Brunswick’s graduation ceremonies called on graduates to take a serious interest in university policy.

Dr. George F.G. Stanley, historian, author and designer of Canada’s national flag, said the provincial and federal governments are "pouring millions of dollars into higher education in Canada, and they are demanding g a louder voice in the direction of university policy."

He said it is the government’s duty to represent the people who provide the funds, and since the graduates are now part of those people, they should take an active interest in the university.

"It is you," he told the 897 graduates, "rather than the undergraduate body, who will be able to tell whether the education you have received here has any validity or relevance outside the world of academe."

"For the university to ignore the experiences of its graduates and limit its consultation on policy to its staff and undergraduates, is to accentuate the unworldliness of the university and invite more state control and further limitations of university autonomy," he said.

He discussed three facets of educations – fact, thought and experience, and said "…it is this third dimension, experience, which gives significance to your education."

Dr. Stanley said experience brings judgment, "that quality which gives perspective and direction to all of our life’s activities,"
to the other facets of education.

Judgment, or "horse sense," is not exclusive with the university professors, or students, he said; it "comes from contact with people in other walks and levels of life."

Dr. Stanley said judgment is a quality much needed in this era of "neo-romanticism," since rationalism is in disfavor today because it does not have ready answers for all current problems.

"The stock of the economist and the physicist, because these disciplines proceed by rational processes, is held in low esteem by some students, while those of the sociologist, the poet, the astrologer and the phrenologist (one who studies the skull to determine mental faculties and character traits) are enjoying a rising market," he said.

He mentioned the "dire consequences" brought to the world when the young German romantics of the 1930s succumbed to the appeals of emotion.

"And I wonder how many students who parrot the sayings of Mao Tse-Tung recognize how similar the phrases they are mouthing are to those written by Benito Mussolini?"

"The role of the university should, therefore, be to dilute the enthusiasms of romanticism with the sanity of reason," he said. "What we should find in our education is a reasoned balance of rationalism and romanticism."



Telegraph Journal (16 May 1975). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

An education becomes "both irrelevant and misleading" if the student fails to acquire judgment from experience, the university of New Brunswick’s class of 1975 was told Thursday.

"Judgment comes from contact with people in other walks and levels of life," said Dr. George F. Stanley. "How often have I found it possessed by men who worked on the land, in the woods, on the sea, in the factories, and in the ranks of the armed services.

"Horse sense is what they usually call it. I would say the best graduate school I ever attended was the army."

To him, he said, "judgment is a quality much needed in this area of neo-romanticism, into which he have moved culturally and intellectually." The trend began in Europe and reached North America after the Second World War, said Dr. Stanley, but even though he and others "listened eagerly to the political gurus of the day" – people like Marx and Lenin – "anarchism and violence had no relevance, because we still held to the concepts of rationalism.

"Unrestrained emotionalism were not for us."

But rationalism is in disfavor in some quarters today, he said, perhaps "because it does not hold all the ready answers to current problems."

The rise in popularity of romanticism "might be relatively harmless and could be dismissed as youthful idealism were it not for the fact that lacking the balance provided by reason and the judgment provided by experience, the young romantics are all too easily exploited by the thought pedlars and the drug pedlars, the new power-seeking manipulators in politics and business.

"Those of you with an historical turn of mind will recall how readily the young German romantics of the 1930s succumbed to the appeals of emotion, with dire consequences to the world," said Dr. Stanley.

"And I wonder how many students who parrot the sayings of Mao Tse Tung recognize how similar those phases are to those written by Benito Mussolini?

"To protest against the heresy of elitism by burning university buildings is like the burning of books in pre-war Europe. And to equate love with pornography is to confuse chastity with sex perversion."

Dr. Stanley said the role of the university should be to "dilute the enthusiasm of romanticism with the sanity of reason" so that education becomes "a reasoned balance of rationalism and romanticism."

He was one of five people to receive honorary degrees yesterday during the university’s 146th Encaenia. In addition, almost 900 others received degrees in course. The ceremonies were held before a capacity crowd at the Lady Beaverbrook Rink.

Dr. Stanley told the graduates there is "a certain amount of sententious babble" in educational circles today about "The necessity of eliminating fact from the curriculum and teaching undergraduates to think."

"We heard this sort of thing when I was an undergraduate," he said. "It is one of the hardy myths of educational philosophy."

But instead of abandoning the teaching of facts for the encouragement of thought, "thought and fact must go together." To learn facts "without ever making use" of them "is an exercise in memory," said Dr. Stanley.

"At the same time, to indulge in the extravagances of thought without any foundation of fact is no more than an exercise in sterile scholasticism."

What gives "significance to fact and to thought is experience," he said. "the fact and theory you have acquired during your years at this university are not without validity, or relevance, if that is the better word. And to them experience beings judgment, that quality which gives perspective and direction to all of life’s activities."