For persons of
leisure and means such growing demand can be met by increased activity
of the universities. University Extension is to be the university of the
busy.
My definition puts the hope of extending university education in this
sense to the whole nation without exception. I am aware that to some
minds such indiscriminate extension will seem like an educational
communism, on a par with benevolent schemes for redistributing the
wealth of society so as to give everybody a comfortable income all
round. But it surely ought not to be necessary to explain that in
proposing a universal system of education we are not meaning that what
each individual draws from the system will be the same in all cases. In
this as in every other public benefit that which each person draws from
it must depend upon that which he brings to it. University Extension may
be conceived as a stream flowing from the high ground of universities
through the length and breadth of the country; from this stream each
individual helps himself according to his means and his needs; one takes
but a cupful, another uses a bucket, a third claims to have a cistern to
himself: every one suits his own capacity, while our duty is to see that
the stream is pure and that it is kept running.
Pages:
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114