Huxley and Education: Address at the Opening of the College Year, Columbia University, September 28, 1910 |
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abnormality acceleration altogether ambition American student artist atrophied brilliant British Cambridge centrifugal force centrip centripetal COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY constructive creative culture daily Darwin earlier and earlier editorials engineer etal evolution of education experience expression fact fathom line five foot shelf football Fourier give graduate school Greek human HUXLEY AND EDUCATION Huxley's impulses Kelland Kelvin kind knowledge learning and observation least resistance lecture liberal education line of greatest line of least lives logic mathematician McCosh mental metabolism meteors mind modern moral morning paper namely Nature Note that whereas one's opinion outflowing Palæolithic Pasteur pendent political prayer precept predispositions principle productive thinking professor Rattlesnake REC'D LD Regard Rostand self-education sense of Truth six powers Socrates structive teacher thing thrust forward tion to-day trouble lies truth and beauty tual UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA wondrous world of ideas worth reading write young youth
Popular passages
Page 42 - That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind...
Page 39 - Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.
Page 5 - The stars come nightly to the sky ; The tidal wave comes to the sea ; Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, Can keep my own away from me.
Page 38 - Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Page 9 - A poor virgin, Sir, An ill favored thing, Sir, But mine own." I shall present in this brief address only one idea, namely, the lesson of Huxley's life and the result of my own experience is that productive thinking is the chief means as well as the chief end of education...
Page 25 - This method of teaching, the Socratic, which requires the student to use his own mind and do his own thinking, is now coming to be accepted everywhere as the best substitute for what Osborn describes as "the prevailing system of overfeeding, which stuffs, crams, pours in, spoon-feeds, and, as a sort of death-bed repentance, institutes creative work after graduation.
Page 26 - If so, you should know that not a five foot shelf of books, not even the ardent reading of a fifty foot shelf aided by prodigious memory will give you that enviable thing called culture, because the yardstick of this precious quality is not what you take in but what you give out, and this from the subtle chemistry of your brain must have passed through a mental metabolism of your own so that you have lent something to it.
Page 34 - The measure of the teachers success is the degree in which ideas come, not from him but from his pupils. A brilliant address may produce a temporary emotion of admiration, a dry lecture may produce a permanent impulse in its hearers. One may compare some who are popularly known as gifted teachers to expert swimmers who stay on the bank and talk inspiringly on analysis of strokes ; the centrifugal teacher takes the pupils into the water with him; he may even pretend to drown and call for rescue.
Page 30 - ... in your mind, and you will finally develop a mind of your own. Do not climb that mountain of learning in the hope that when you reach the summit you will be able to think for yourself; think for yourself while you are climbing.