Apart
from this, the steps in our educational ladder other than the first are
still in the stage of prophecy. But it is universally recognized that
this drawback is a matter solely of funds: once let the movement command
endowment and the localities will certainly demand the wider curriculum
that the universities are only too anxious to supply.
The third point in our definition was that the movement was to be
organized on a basis of itinerant teachers. This differentiates
University Extension from local colleges, from correspondence teaching,
and from the systems of which Chautauqua is the type. The chief function
of a university is to teach, and University Extension must stand or fall
with its teachers. It may or may not be desirable on other grounds to
multiply universities; but there is no necessity for it on grounds of
popular education, the itinerancy being a sufficient means of bringing
any university into touch with the people as a whole. And the adoption
of such a system seems to be a natural step in the evolution of
universities. In the middle ages the whole body of those who sought a
liberal education were to be found crowded into the limits of university
towns, where alone were teachers to listen to and manuscripts to copy:
the population of such university centres then numbered hundreds where
to-day it numbers tens.
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