Should Students Study?/Chapter VIII

by William Trufant Foster

When a man has made up his mind that a student should study, the next question is, what should he study? Should he plan to become a specialist? If so, should he specialize?

Tolstoy, in his Fables for Children, does not tell us whether specialists should specialize, but he does tell us about an Indian King who ordered all the Blind Men to be assembled. When they came he ordered that all the Elephants be shown to them. The Blind Men went to the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a leg, and another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a belly, a fifth a back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks, and an eighth a trunk.

Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them, "What are my Elephants like?"

One Blind Man said, "Your Elephants are like posts." He had felt the legs.

Another Blind Man said, "They are like bath-brooms." He had felt the end of the tail.

A third said, "They are like branches." He had felt the tail stump.

The one who had touched the belly said, "The Elephants are like a clod of earth."

The one who had touched the sides said, "They are like a wall."

The one who had touched a back said, "They are like a mound."

The one who had touched the ears said, "They are like mortar."

The one who had touched the tusks said, "They are like horns."

The one who had touched the trunk said that they were like a stout rope.

And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel.

Hasty Specialists

Every now and then a Blind Man seeks admission to college for the avowed purpose of learning all about an elephant's trunk without knowing anything about the elephant. He objects to taking even a half-course on elephants' tusks because he cannot see that the subject has any practical connection with his specialty. Every now and then a boy says to his teachers: "I want to study English composition. I have been told that I have unusual talent as a writer. I must not waste time. I am already eighteen years old. I cannot afford to take courses in history and philosophy and science. My specialty is writing." It is sometimes difficult for such a boy to comprehend fully what a great convenience it is, for one who wishes to write, to have something to say.

Then there is the man who is ambitious to become a public speaker. He does not care to study logic and psychology and history. Not at all. those studies may do very well for people who have plenty of time and no definite aim in life. As for him, he wishes to become a public speaker, and therefore he desires only a course in public speaking, and that a brief one. Why waste time? The alluring man, in the advertising columns of the magazine, cries out, "I can make you a convincing speaker for fifteen minutes a day." As for something to say, have we not been assured a thousand times that fifteen minutes a day and five-foot shelf of books are sufficient for a liberal education?

One trouble with the hasty specialist is that he defeats his own purpose. He cannot know all about an elephant's trunk without knowing which end it is on and why. He cannot be an expert in the care of human eyes without knowing the human body. A specialist who is only a specialist is no specialist at all. Specialization without a broad foundation is a contradiction of terms.

A specialist is supposed to have a thorough knowledge of one comparatively small field, but he cannot understand one small field except in the manifold relations of other fields. The greatest specialists—to use a phrase of Doctor Crothers's—"specialize in the humanities." The greatest colleges—to use a phrase of Matthew Arnold's—help men to see life steadily and see it whole. The liberal curriculum is designed to furnish every man with lasting means and incentives for measuring the narrowness of his own mind.

When, by specializing, we mean deliberately narrowing the scope of one's knowledge and appreciation, we mean a kind of concentration of effort which may prepare for certain routine work, directed by other people. It cannot prepare for intelligent leadership. The kind of specialized preparation which means first breadth and eventually leadership has no royal short cut.

Cultural vs. Practical Studies

Should we, then, choose studies which are practical or those which are cultural? Of all educational controversies, this is the most familiar, the most hotly pursued, and perhaps the most futile. The Blind Men in Tolstoy's fable disputed and quarreled to no purpose. Now, this quarrel is futile because there is no such thing as a purely practical subject and there is no such thing as a purely cultural subject. The naïve division of all studies into those which are useful and those which are merely ornamental has doomed to confusion from the start much of our modern discussion concerning the relative values of vocational high schools and classical high schools, or colleges of liberal arts, on the one hand, and technical and professional schools, on the other hand.

No subject can be sensibly considered apart from the animating purpose of the teacher, the attitude of the student, and the dominant spirit of the institution. Any subject may be partly cultural—dressmaking, for example, and sign-painting and blacksmithing. Under certain conditions, for certain persons, much studies would be chiefly cultural. Any study, on the other hand, may be practical, as Latin was in the Middle Ages for every one who studied it, and as it is to-day for every one who teaches it. To attempt to divide the curriculum of lower schools or higher schools into practical and cultural subjects is to ignore the meaning of specialization.

It is more illuminating to attempt to classify subjects of study as immediately practical and ultimately practical, as narrowly cultural and broadly cultural.