Liberal Education for a Free Society

MR. LAWSON: The late Stephen Leacock once said something appropriate to this occasion: "If I were founding a university I would first found a smoking room; then when I had a little more money in hand I would found a dormitory; then after that a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some textbooks." I simply mention this for what it's worth, sir. There is probably more than one way of going about it.

The function of a chairman, usually, is to introduce the speaker to the audience. On this occasion it seems to me appropriate to reverse the procedure and introduce the audience to the speaker. Dr. Murray Ross, to use an old cliché, needs no introduction. He has just recently been appointed president of York University. We have known him as an experienced educator and sociologist, the author of over a dozen books and pamphlets and more articles than he can remember. For the past three years he has been vice-president of the University of Toronto, of which he was previously a lecturer, associate professor, professor and executive assistant to the president. As I said, he needs no introduction.

Your audience, sir, is the salt of the earth. In this age of topsy-turvy values all too many of us pay lip service to education but begrudge the money required for adequate schools or respectable salaries for teachers. The University of Toronto's campaign will go over the top, but it has required a tremendous effort by a very able and dedicated group of men and women to raise less than $1.00 per capita per annum from the community that the University serves. We come to meetings to hear politicians and business men, but, generally speaking, not to hear educators.

But the members here, sir, and those that listen over the radio, are different. By their presence they mark themselves as your supporters and as believers in the great enterprise of building York University. In the words of the song I start you with ten and we will do all we can to find you ten thousand more. Dr. Murray G. Ross, it is a pleasure to introduce to you a fine group of Toronto business men, the members and guests of the Empire Club of Canada.

MR. ROSS: I must first of all thank you for your interest in, and recognition of, York University, as evidenced by your invitation to me to address this meeting today.

York University is proving to be an exciting project--certainly the most interesting and exhilarating project on which I have worked. It is exciting for two particular reasons. First, because York University will have to do in ten--certainly not more than fifteen--years, many of the things that most universities in the past have taken one hundred years to do. You and I will see rising before our eyes in Toronto another great university, and such a university may symbolize not merely the physical growth of Toronto, but the intellectual and spiritual maturation of this city, as well. York University is an exciting project, also, because it seems to have stirred the interest and imagination of people in Metropolitan Toronto to such an extent that we have had many moving and generous offers of assistance. I will confess that there are a few of these which, although offered with kindness and generosity, are not very practical. (After all, even though it is undoubtedly of historic interest, York University is hardly yet in a position to house an old railway steam engine.) One of the major problems of our distinguished Board of Governors, of which the Hon. Robert Winters is Chairman, is to assure individually and with proper grace and courtesy, all those who offer help, that we are extremely grateful for their assistance.

We are, of course, much indebted to the University of Toronto, to Colonel Eric Phillips and to President Bissell, for their help in getting us started in a way that permits us, in our early years, to be affiliated with, and draw upon the resources of, that great University. The support of government officials--both provincial and local, of newspapers, of people who would give property or money for scholarships, has been most encouraging.

My own role is, in reality, a modest one. Indeed, I find it useful to remind myself of the words of Sir Winston Churchill, who found himself in a similar, though infinitely more heroic and important, situation. He explained that his part in the British war effort was not so great as people thought: "It was the nation . . ." he said, "that had the lion's heart I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar." 1, too, have been called upon "to give the roar--indeed, so frequently has the roar been required after a meal, by some groups in Toronto recently, that I have been reflecting on Lord Hailsham's words, uttered on his death-bed: "My exit is the result of too many entrees." Nonetheless, you will recognize that behind the roar, is the work of many hundreds of individuals, and it is this work that makes the development of York University possible.

You will be curious, I hope, to know what kind of an institution York University will be. At the moment I can tell you in a sentence what York is: it is a Board of Governors; it is a few desks and chairs, myself and a few teaching colleagues, and a number of heads full of ideas bursting for expression. It is a university without students, and without a library, though we will have both very quickly. So may I caution you that what you will hear from me today will be my preliminary speculation--or dreaming--about the purpose of a university, and what York University will try to do to fulfill that purpose. But may I suggest that, in our society, ideas--particularly new ideas--are the essential fuel for our progress. I recall the story of a university president who, as he was about to leave his office one night and was reflecting on the day's effort, reported: "I recalled that three different younger members of the faculty had come to me with interesting and attractive ideas of things we might do. I rejected all of them. I realized immediately that anyone who was so rigid as to reject indiscriminately all new ideas was too old for the job. I penned my resignation, which I left on my desk, and I have never since returned to that office." This lesson is equally applicable to a society; a society that is not alert and eager to consider creative thrusts of the mind, is already in process of becoming decadent.

One of the conditioning factors for York University, and one of the chief reasons for its creation, is of course the simple pressure of numbers of students in the Toronto area who will seek a university education in this and future generations. By 1970, it has been estimated that there will be 36,000 young persons in the area who will desire, and have the qualifications for, university education. The University of Toronto plans to take about 23,000 students; more than 13,000 will have to look elsewhere. These statistical estimates, made some time ago, already appear to be substantial underestimates. It now seems clear that there will be far more university students in this area than any of us had anticipated, and we are extremely slow in awakening to this fact. As I will indicate to you in a moment, York University does not intend to become a factory for the mass production of students, and it can therefore grow only with resources which will permit it to maintain proper academic standards--an appropriate student-faculty ratio, student residences, research facilities, and so on. I think we have not yet realized the cost of doing this. The Ontario Government estimate is that $4,500 is required in capital expenditure for every university student. I think this estimate is low, but in any case, you can see the cost of building a university for 13,000 students will be approximately $60,000,000. I wonder if we are willing to make such an investment? I remember well speaking to the Deputy Minister of Education in the Soviet Union, at the conclusion of my visit there two years ago. I complimented him on the advances in education in the USSR, and he replied: "We do only what you do; but soon we will do it better." They might, but somehow I doubt it. We here are often slow to recognize our opportunities and our responsibilities; but when we do, we move with conviction and spirit, as free men always have. I do not doubt that the resources will be provided to allow York University to serve well the youth of this country.

What we now need in Canada, I think, are not only facilities for teaching more students, but greater variety of opportunity for our students. The doctrine of equality of opportunity, to which we in North American education are committed, does not mean that every student should have the same opportunity. It does mean that the education system should be so rich that every student of special interest and ability can find the particular institution which will nurture his ability and draw out his excellence. I think you would agree that in Canada we do not possess the range of teaching institutions to do this. If we observe Canadian universities today, we find that almost all follow the same design, providing much the same pattern of courses in arts and science, and endlessly duplicating their professional schools. We do need variety in higher education. This is true in Canada as a whole; it is particularly true in Toronto. Indeed, as most of us know, this is the only city of comparable size on this continent, with only one university.

It will be the pleasure of York University to "blaze new trails". This certainly does not mean that our existing universities are old-fashioned, or rusty, or complacent--unaware of, and indifferent to, the changes the world has undergone in the last hundred years. But any institution bears some of the marks and limitations of the ideas of its founders and early leaders; change becomes more difficult as old habits become entrenched. York will have the advantage for its first fifty years, of establishing new traditions, with few of the vested interests which inhibit experimentation. We are now at the point where the University of Toronto was much earlier, when it was setting the pattern for its greatness. The vigour and freshness of York University's views will, I hope, occasionally influence our neighbour in this city; we would gain by finding ourselves in a friendly competition for excellence with the University of Toronto.

The field of our concern will be liberal education in the arts and basic sciences, with a particular emphasis on the great ideas and movements of the last one hundred years. Our curriculum is not yet adopted, so that what I say about this is especially speculative and personal; and in any case, our ideas, when they are more definite, will not be applied until after we cease our affiliation with the University of Toronto. But may I sketch an outline of what I think many of our students will be given the chance to study?

History, philosophy, literature, the social and natural sciences, the staple subjects of a liberal education, are justified by the training they give to the mind; they are justified by the sense of harmony and knowledge of complexity--the subtle appreciation of the way things hang together, which intensive study gives us--a kind of artistic appreciation of beauty and order. But they must justify themselves, too, by the preparation which they give us for life in this chaotic world. A university cannot be an ivory tower--or a steel and concrete tower, as it is more likely to be today--sealed off from the outside world. If it does become too isolated and inbred, immune from the infections that sweep the social and political body of the world, the university will be unable to prepare men for the nature of life outside. The effect of too great isolation will, I suggest, be dangerous both for the vitality of the university and the good health of the country. A university cannot be turned inside out because the world is upside down; its courses cannot be juggled thoughtlessly to take account of passing fads; but neither can a university resign from the twentieth century and its problems. But far too many university departments have never adjusted to the modern world. They exist as beautiful monuments to a way of life that has disappeared. And far too many intellectuals in the university have, as C. P. Snow remarked in his Rede lecture at Cambridge, ". . . never tried, wanted, or been able to understand the industrial revolution . . ." let alone the present scientific revolution. A responsible university must find a place in its studies for the deep and sustained problems of twentieth-century life. As President Conant, of Harvard University, has said:

". . . if a university is to be alive generation after generation, the institution ... must be in close touch with the life of the community which it serves. The essential motivating force behind a university's scholarly work and research, in all times and places, when universities have flourished, has been the connection between the scholar's activities and the burning questions of the day."

To do otherwise is to be unrealistic, and to prepare students for a world that does not, and will not again exist. So a first task of York University will be to use the great traditional subjects to shed light on the problems of today's world. We want lively discussion of the new Africa„ of Britain's economic recovery, of the United States' presidential election, of the state of the arts in Canada, of new discoveries in the natural sciences; but we want these discussions to occur in a context in which history, and geography, and philosophy, and mathematics, and literature, and sociology are used to illumine the problem. Indeed, if you watch carefully the appointments to the teaching staff at York University, you will find they are appointments in the first instance, of scholars, but in most cases, scholars who have been giving special study to the problems of contemporary society.

This is, as we are reminded ad nauseam, the age of the specialist. The nuclear physicist, the social psychologist, the bank economist, the cultural anthropologist, each burrows deeper and deeper into his own hole in the ground. The further he gets in, using his special digging tools, the harder he finds it to turn around and come up for air, and to meet other specialists under the common sky. And down the burrow of each, more and more side tunnels are extended away from the main one. The old jest is that specialists are getting to know more and more about less and less; but as Robert Hutchins has said, many of them are in fact learning less and less about less and less.

Within our universities, many specialists are unable to speak in a common language to one another, and can only talk of last night's television show or today's weather. This is a shocking and disastrous state for a university. No one in his right mind would today oppose the need for a high degree of specialization. But to have a specialization and nothing else, is to possess but half an education.

The major groups in the universities are the natural scientists, the social scientists, and the humanists. Each is deeply convinced of the ignorance of the other two groups.

C. P. Snow, in the lecture to which I have already referred, reported: "A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of the scientists. Once of twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?" This could be restated in a variety of ways to suggest the ignorance of scientists of basic principles of anthropology, or of social scientists of basic principles of mathematics. What is unfortunate is that specialization has so possessed our universities that we produce students with a limited, if not distorted view, of the world of knowledge.

One of the great myths of our day is that the universities of the Soviet Union are completely dedicated to specialization. They do provide, indeed, for specialization--and perhaps more intensively than we do--but always after two and one-half years of general education--two and one-half years of Russian literature, philosophy, history, dialectic materialism, and a foreign language. The result is that most Soviet specialists, regardless of their field of specialization, can provide a relatively enlightened defence of Soviet policy, both at home and abroad, and can, indeed, discuss a wide range of subjects. I do not advocate their teaching method, with its bias and tendency to indoctrination; but surely the fundamental idea that all educated men must possess knowledge of their country and its political system, must be acquainted with scientific methodology, must know something about language and literature--surely this basic idea has validity.

In any case, York University is dedicated to providing all its students with a programme of general and liberal education before specialization. John Stuart Mill has said, "Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians." It will be our aim to encourage, first of all, the development of capable and sensible men. We will seek the teacher who realizes this need; who is able to speak of his own subject in language as clear as possible; who can relate what he knows to the knowledge of his colleagues; who can take a lively and active part in a continuing debate about truth; and who can communicate his insights and enthusiasm to his students. We shall try to break down the barriers of specialization, to give to York University students a sense of the unity of knowledge. I suspect that many young persons, who have greater perception than we elders suppose, feel an instinctive desire for such a unified approach to truth. They only await our lead.

Emphasis on recent significant thought, and a general rather than a narrow specialized education, are two of our aims. A third might be to take a hard, cool look at some of the folk myths by which we guide our lives, to try to bring them into touch with contemporary reality. Some of these myths, for example, are contained in the words we use to describe our society: democracy, capitalist, free enterprise, individualist, big business; or the words we use to describe other societies: socialist, communist, totalitarian, underdeveloped, primitive. All these words have strong emotional associations which make it difficult for us to see whether they are true descriptions or not. In fact, we have many reasons to believe that all these common words are misleading abstractions. One of the functions of the scholar is to qualify words, to fill out descriptions; and this often means to debunk popular beliefs. We do not do enough of it. This job of the scholar to be a critic may appear destructive, but basically it is not. He criticizes in order to improve; he demolishes in order to rebuild. I hope that York University will soon be a lively participant in Canada's national debate.

From these reflections, you will see that I am an advocate of what is called "a liberal education". This phrase is often used and rarely defined. Woodrow Wilson, when he was president of Princeton University, said: "The object of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible". He saw that is the very essence of a university to be a hothouse of intellect and character, that a university is concerned with individual persons. It is a place where young men and women are given intellectual food, the framework of discipline, and the inspiration of wise teachers (though, sadly, there are fools among us, too), to become individuals.

If we are to be such a university, we will require more understanding by you, and others in this community, than is often given to universities. For we will be helping young people to struggle through the great questions of the day to reach their own conclusions. Inevitably, in this process, they will embrace, if only temporarily, highly unconventional ideas--ideas that may shock us all. But surely the essence of education as we know it is to encourage and nourish students in their search for truth, and to be tolerant of the mistakes they make in this process. I dare say there is not one of us here today, who has a belief or ideal that has great meaning in our lives, who has not had to struggle through doubt and uncertainty to reach that belief. Great and compelling beliefs can only be secured in this way. I ask your support in permitting York University to help students explore and experiment in the world of ideas.

Finally, we hope York University will be distinctive by the development of its own tutorial method. Each student will meet with his tutor for an academic session at least five times a year. Since the time of Aristotle, no finer teaching method has been found than this dialogue between teacher and pupil. The informality, the personal contact, the relationship of student and scholar in a tutorial session, hold promise of an enrichment of the student's life impossible in any other way. This we hope to make an essential part of our university life.

All these are brave words and bold promises for a university without students and without buildings. It may be that the opportunity will not be given to us to develop in this way. The horizon of the future is dark, and there are storms ahead. But this has always been true, and this knowledge did not deter the creative and imaginative men who built our country. It will not deter us. And a new York will rise before our eyes, and it will be a centre of learning, and it will bless those who seek truth within it.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Hon. Robert H. Winters.