26 An Ideal College

Every student of the thinking set, when he joins a college, is attracted by some of its arrangements and is repelled by certain others. If he is a realist with a cynical bias, he would condemn the institution as a whole. But if he is an idealist, he would dream of an ideal educational institution every aspect of which would answer to the creation of his fancy. Even such might be the feeling of a teacher who is new to the teaching staff of a college. He also might be at either of the two poles, realist hardened into a cynic or an idealist, weaving dreams or fancies. In a cynical mood, he would, perhaps, condemn the whole system of education as useless and his own college as a worthless pile of bricks. Again, in an idealistic mood, he might think of an ideal academy as the fulfilment of his fondest wish.

An ideal college, in our view, should consist of a few buildings including a wellequipped library of a few thousand well- chosen books and a few laboratories for the teaching of Physics, Chemistry and Biology. An ideal college such as we conceive should have a set of professors who are masters of the subjects they profess: They should be men of learning. Now men of learning are of two kinds; men who carry in their minds an enormous quantity of information about a certain subject which they freely give to those who seek it and men who, having known much, constantly struggle to extend the bounds of knowledge. The former are a class of teachers who can explain the subject in the classroom but cannot inspire the students; the latter are a class of teachers who can both explain the subject and inspire and taught with a love for the subject. An ideal college should have professors of the letter type on the staff. The professors of the ideal college should be placed above want so that they may not be led to think of money and worldly success. Liberal grants should be made to the ideal college by the state; then the Principal such a college would not be tempted to admit any number of students merely to fill his college coffers with their tuition fees. In the ideal college, no student should be regarded as a business proposition. The tone of lectures delivered in the classroom should be of a high standard. Many people think that an ideal professor is one the whole of whose talk or lecture is understood by all the members of the class. This is an entirely wrong idea. At least some portion of his talk should not be thoroughly comprehended by any one of the class; the ideal professor should pack into that portion deep suggestions and inspiration which the more brilliant students of the class are able only to apprehend; they are to ponder over them in leisure and quiet moments of thought and after so doing, extract from them food for thought. In the ideal college, every student of the Arts subjects should be driiied through a course of popular lectures on applied science as every student of science should be made to attend a course of easy lectures on Arts subjects. This will enlarge the vision of the students; it will enable them to have a firmer grasp of the realities of life. Human life is a Cu>np~ ..v of reason and imagination. The discipline such as we have outlined will bring into play in equal degree the faculty of reasoning and the power of imagination. The end of liberal education is to impart to the student a knowledge of the whole or philosophical knowledge; in the absence of it, a student can apply his knowledge to real life and the problems it raises. By imparting some knowledge of science to the students of Literature, Philosophy or History and some knowledge of these subjects to the students of science, the ideal college will fulfil in a large measure the true end of liberal education. In the ideal college, every student should play whatever game he likes. Usually in a college, only some students take interest in games; again, of these, some take to sports as a profession. Both are vices and should be rigidly eliminated from the discipline of the ideal college. In the ideal college, playgrounds should be numerous enough to accommodate all the students on its rolls, for none should be exempted from sports. Again, professionalism in sports must be strongly condemned and put an end to without pity. There are some educationalists who think that in a college students should be encouraged to form unions such as Students Union or Speakers Union and societies such as Historical, Philosophical, Literary, Economic and Chemical societies or to start a College Magazine. It is true that the latent powers of the students are often called into play at the meetings of such societies or in the pages

of the college magazine. For instance, William Morris, an English poet of the midnineteenth century published his first poetical efforts in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine of 1856. Many brilliant students of our universities developed powers that have brought them success in later life at the students unions and the debating societies of the college that had nursed them in the early part of their academic career. But, as Stephen Leacock aptly observes in his Model Memoirs, too many clubs,- societies, and associations in a college distract the minds of the taught. Leacock even goes so far as to say that the whole movement of students should not be permitted to take an active part in the noisy politics of the time; nor should the teachers, engaged in deep study and patient research, be asked too attend to many Committee meetings. In the idea! college, there should not be co-education. Experiments in co-education have no doubt been extensively carried on in the American Colleges. But in our view, it does more evil than good. First, Eve is likely to.tempt the Adam in the teachers and the taught. Again, just the opposite evil might follow. Too much familiarity between the sexes at the adolescent stage often destroys the element of romance in love leading to marriage. The history of marriage in the United States, if carefully studied; does not encourage one to believe in co-education. In 1999, a report by a British newspaper expressed great concerns and criticised - the increasing familiarity between schoolboys and girls because only an eleven years old girl got pregnant in a British school.

Built on spacious grounds, with far-stretching play fields on either side and beautifully laid out avenues and flower-beds in front, the ideal college, staffed by the best of professors absorbed in the pursuit of knowledge and living always up to a high standard of morality, teaches the students to make their ideals as high as the sky and their knowledge as deep as the sea. The dons of the ideal college are not, as A. c. Benson remarks, a set of narrow-minded men bent double with age and scholarship; they are, on the other hand, lively persons, better advantaged than the rather inaccessible fathers of the boys they have to handle; sympathising both warmly and freely with the aspirations of youth, they will shape the young students into ideal citizens of the world who might in later life apply their academic knowledge to the minutest and most complex problems of day-to-day life in deeply moral spirit.