Chapter 28. The Community Enters the University
- European education
- property of an exclusive few
- universities were hothouses where only certain kinds of thinking could flourish
- American differences
- legal vagueness and blurring of distinctions between college and university helped to break educational monopolies
- sharp and significant distinction in England
- colleges had no powers to grant degrees
- university a degree-granting institution
- until early 19th century Oxford and Cambridge were only
English universities - old world distinction became confused and ceased to have meaning
- uncertain and unsolved questions concerning Harvard have lasted into 20th century
- legal foundation
- origin of authority to grant degrees
- question of whether and in what legal sense, if at all, it is property a college or university
- history of colonial colleges
- triumph of legal practice over theory
- needs of community over abstruse distinctions of lawyers
- outside control drew college into community
- European education
- colleges and universities centers for a proud and eminent group of learned men
- university independent of community
- university isolated from community
- remained entrenched behind medieval walls
- American education
- colleges were brand-new artifacts
- no large body of learned men
- control fell to community
- college president
- result of outside control
- power vacuum left by trustees (with no time to govern) and professors (oftentimes transient and youthful)
- combined the academic and the man of business
- living symbol of the breakdown of cloistered walls
Chapter 29. Higher Education in Place of Higher Learning
- Religious sectarianism and variety
- mid 18th century - after the Great Awakening -- led to rapid growth of colonial colleges
- colleges were founded to support established church of colony
- by the Revolutionary War, nearly every major Christian sect had its own institution
- competition for students
- no single sect could furnish an entire school
- nonsectarianism, through a logical development, became the ideal of American education
- Geographic distances and local pride
- never an effective movement for a national university
- numerous and diverse American colleges never formed a self-conscious community of learned men
- colleges were definitely institutions of local community
- primary aim was to supply its particular region with doctors, lawyers, ministers, merchants, and political leaders
- early American colleges
- center of each colony's affairs
- link between learning and public life
- Social and geographic mobility: the competition for students
- study recruiting then was similar to techniques of modern era except for use of sports scholarships
- schools put large sums of money into construction of new buildings
- Proliferation of colleges
- increase in quantity of degrees, but not quality
- issuing an inflated intellectual currency
- traditional curriculum
- tutors passed on what had been taught to them
- what distinguished American colleges was not corpus of knowledge, but how, when, where, and to whom it was communicated
- became less identified with any one profession
- anxious to spread learning to a large number of students
- shaping new tests in the value of learning
Chapter 30. Ideal of the Undifferentiated Man
- Vagueness of American social classes
- liberal or professional education could not retain its former precision
- distinction which had been hallowed by custom, law and language in Europe came to seem vague and artificial in America
- Diffusion of roles
- hard for a man to prepare for any one role in America since roles had not yet been sharply defined
- new and more diversified role of women
- scarcity of labor tended to remove social prejudice
- one in the learned profession was judged on how well he performed rather than on how much he knew in some subject
- lack of enthusiasm for the man of profound, detached, and pure intelligence
Related posts:
The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstin, Book 1. The Vision and the Reality Part 1. A City Upon a Hill: The Puritans of Massachusetts. (12/8/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 2. The Inward Plantation: The Quakers of Pennsylvania. (12/10/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 3. Victims of Philanthropy: The Settlers of Georgia. (12/13/2014)
The Americans; The Colonial Experience, Part 4. Transplanters: The Virginians. (12/14/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Book 2. Viewpoints and Institutions. Part 5: An American Frame of Mind. (12/17/2014)
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