As we near the end of the first semester this year, it is well that we take inventory of our achievements for the past weeks. Every student here has now been in college long enough to realize that it is not supposed to be a great funnel. We should all be able to see by now that there is no such thing as having knowledge poured into our heads. As far as pure knowledge is concerned, we have all discovered that it must be dug out. We must add to our own brain power, it can’t be increased from the outside.
So much for the acquiring of pure knowledge. All of us have learned something this year from that standpoint. We will learn a little if only we attend classes. Blut in looking back over the time we have spent here in college we begin to realize that the ultimate aim of a college course is not mere learning of the content of books. We are now in a position to see that the aim of college, and of all learning, is to teach us to live. Though we learned to speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not learned to live with our fellow-man, we have accomplished nothing. After carefully looking the matter over we can easily see that this one thing is the am of the field of education.
Then if we are to learn to live with our fellow-man, how are we to get this from our college course? First of all, we must make ourselves realize that this is the aim of our education. Then we must practice living. Let this statement cover a wide range. Do you create disturbances in the buildings and around the campus because it adds anything to your education, or do you do it because you have never fully realized that you are in college to learn to live with your fallow-man? Do not take the letter of the law as our own, or do you consider that may be a trifling condescension on your part will aid some one else more than it will you? This is what we mean by learning to live. Meet your neighbor on equal terms. Give him his just deserts and expect of him your just part.
You can’t take the four years spent in college out of your life. What you ae and what you do here will be what you are and what you do after you leave college. Live here as you expect to live after you get out of college. And remember that the yell of the school of experience is “ouch.” That school is our alma mater, and it will be appropriate for you to learn that yell and know its significance.
From the editorial page of the Maroon and Gold, student newspaper at Elon College, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/2015236757/1925-11-18/ed-1/seq-2/
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