Negro College Students and the Need of Personnel Work

Abstract

Place of the Child in Education.What is your subject? asked the friend of a teacher in one of our large schools. Boys, was the quick reply. I mean, what is your branch? Boys! Boys!! Boys!!! was all the answer that the man would give. Every teacher should feel that his subject is always the child. This applies to every level of education; to the college as well as to the kindergarten. But, because of the rapid development of our educational and the necessity for mass education, there has been a tendency to overemphasize the tools and minutia of education and to minimize its product, the educated individual. In our desire to make the system function efficiently we have forgotten the main purpose of the system; namely, to produce an individual who is a happy and productive citizen, articulating smoothly in our social order. It is assumed that the extent to which any one becomes such a citizen as mentioned above is related to the amount of education he receives. However, it appears that this has not been the case. In recent times many persons have criticized the collegetrained citizen, claiming that his productive output (in ideas and ideals) and the manner in which he is participating in the social economy are not commensurate with the time, effort, and cost of the training he has received. Singularly, these criticisms come not alone from non-college-bred persons, but from those who ordinarily would be expected to be the last to raise a voice in protest, the college alumni, teachers, and administrators. This is not an effort to disparage college training; for, to be sure, it has made a tremendous contribution to the individual and social progress of our times. We are here only bearing testimony to the rising tide of criticism respecting the disproportionate results of college training as compared with the effort, waste, disappointments and failures incident thereto. It is believed that the imperfections ascribed to the college are partly due to the pyramidal structure of our educational system. As we proceed from the lower levels to the higher levels there is a tendency for the faults to become concentrated and accentuated, and the result of the force of their impact which is focused on the individual is more evident than is true at the lower levels. The curricula, having largely been handed down from ancient and medieval times, and being guarded, as they are, by catalog prescriptions, have become formal; and the organization of the college tends to become crystallized. Thus, in this higher level, where the student should be more capable of giving ex-