Chemical Digest COMPANIONATE EDUCATION* There are very few of us who from time to time have not had some catchword or phrase which seemed temporarily to have panacean application. And, as is frequently the case, we have found that the expression so used was quite often more applicable to other circumstances than the original one for which designed. Such an adjective is "companionate" which, according to Joseph Jastrow in a recent issue of the Forum, has a much greater significance when applied to the educational field than to the marriage relation, in which the word has a questionable pertinence. After indicating numerous guises that "companionate education" has thus far assumed, the author defines the term to mean-
. . . taking the pedantic, didactic, institutional, formal, testing, examining, grading, flunking, degreeing, nursing, disciplining, rewarding temper out of the teaching relation, and putting into it the companionate animus of fellow-students pursuing a common interest-the few chosen Leading and stimulating, and the many called eagerly following, yet companions all in a joint enterprise. In venturing the idea of a companionate lecture, the reader's attention is called to the fact that the French have no word for a lecture but call it a confdrence, and that the hearers do not attend but assist at a conference. However, the author is not proposing that the schools be closed a t once in favor of companionate institutes of learning, for we read: Schooling is indispensable so long as immaturity is the natural condition of the young for a deplorably long period. But it is most unfortunate that, because boys and girls go t o school to Learn, or t o prove their resistance t o learning, the teacher-and-pupil relation should he fixed and limited t o that condition. Under a prevalent view, living is made t o be&n . where school in^ .ends, and school ends where life besins. T o hroadcast the companionate idea that stimulating contact with creative and inspiring minds of an adequate adult life, and not for the few but for the many, is an is an internal . rrart . ambitious programme, perhaps too large an order for one adjective t o fill
Believing that an adjustment in the teacher-pupil relation mentioned above would lead to a more general acceptance of companionate education, the author suggests: The formidable task that the ministers (not the administers) of education face is t o liberalize this teacher-pupil relation, t o alter its complexion radically, t o denature it of its schoolday context, t o renature it upon the maturepattern of companionate direction.
* Forum, 80,24&9
(Aug., 1928).
However, there are difficulties. "Teacher," though not beyond redemption, is a pretty . . difficult word t o rehabilitate, and ''pupil" is even more hopeless. Professoring has a presumptuous or an unctuous flavor and has almost become the proprietary perquisite of dancing masters. We are sadly in need of a refurbished educational vocabulary which will abolish in one imperious, destructive stroke this Freudian implication of superiority and inferiority that inheres subconsciously in the teacher-pupil relations, and will transform i t t o the setting of the mature in interest, purpose, and experience.
On reading further, we find some of the recent attempts a t remodeling the present educational structure brought to our attention. The educational structure is a glass house, and stones have been so freely hurled from within and without that every facade shows broken panes. Yet, underlying the several plans for reconstruction or redemption is the sensed incompatibility of the two ideals and the accompanying spirit and procedures-the one of schooling, the other of companionate education. The confusion of college and university has its roots here; in America the "universities" in name are inevitably both in fact. Here and there an isolated institution may attempt a completely graduate school and with some approach t o the companionate ideal. But for the most part the college-university or universitycolleee - faces the compellinn . - situation that it ministers to the transitional period in which pupils are emerging from dependent imitators into companionate thinkers. t o facilitate or semepate this adjustment by providThe iunior college . is a oroposal . ing separately for those who must he, or prefer to be, content with the former status, and for those eager and ready ior the latter. It scrms a promising part solution in many ways. The experimental college-whether of the pattern of Mr. Meiklejohn's or some other remodeled structure-though presenting a differently oriented programme, invites the companionate relation a t an earlier stage. And much of the legitimate criticism of college instruction is directed precisely against the prolongation of such schooling methods to minds that are, or if properly selected should be, ripe for companionate pursuits. Recently the University of Michigan announced a project t o bring the alumni hack t o a companionate status and establish for them just such courses as would appeal to mature worldly interests, thus unexpectedly providing an illuminating contrast t o the undergraduate procedure. Amherst has, in a measure, set a precedent for the proposal, and a provision a t Vassar Collepe, through the ~enerosityof a bequest, has taken a step in the same direction. Companionate education, though mainly expressing the reality of a need, gives promising indication of a varied and ready clientele. ~
As for the present status and future development of this movement, we read: The companionate following has so far shown a far readier eagerness for this educational enterprise than the companionate leadership. And a further canvass, particularly in the great busy centers, will rapidly swell the census oi enrolment in so vitally democratic a cause. The larger clientele and the possibilities of establishing workable patterns of companionate education are inevitahly dependent upon the mass interest of intricately cobrdinated groups oi men, sensitive to the need of guidance in the prohlems of their occupations and their reflections. One must turn to the cosmopolitan outlook itself for the source of such leadership, for a course of study and establishment of effective opinion in the companionate temper.
VOL. 5, No. 10
CHEMICAL DIGEST
1345
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. . Companionate education continues the authentic tradition inherent in the university as such a company of companionable scholars. I n these progressive days such a microcosm of leadership must reflect and take its purpose from the macrocosm of its setting. However important the platform, a more intimate contact of creative minds must be established and favored. Companionate education requires a nucleus, a definite center of radiation and expansion; and central t o that nuclear development is creative effort and research, as well as application. A companionate institution will be in no way aloof or remote or esoteric; i t recognizes the public source of its vitality and assumes its responsibilities in response t o it. It is, indeed, a school, hut equally a companionate "center"-a habitation fitter of men for and richer in connotation than the "social center." This implies a moup whom i t is the way of generations t o come and go, such a nucleus implies a companionate discipleship in which the torch is handed on to younger bearers in fact and not in symbolic ceremony. Its companionship reaches out t o the many-sided interests of men of affaim, breaking down the barrier between the university and the universe, companionatiug them likewise in its humanistic endeavors. ~
A n d do we not agree with Joseph Jastrow that the educational movement involving "adult education" or "post-school education" might aptly be called "companionate education?"
M.
w. G.
