My Ideal University

THIS IS AN ESSAY BY MAXIMO M. KALAW.

Educators and university administrators must now and then pause in their work and indulge in a speculative idealism. The routine of administration and the monotony of the classroom must at times be forgotten to see whether or not we are marching towards the ideal. A campus rich in the instrumentalities of knowledge, replete with association with the great minds of all nations yet inviting to the fellowship and the sports of the present; a student body in reverent attitude toward the past yet eagerly enthusiastic and willing to try new avenues in the future, wedded to the national ideals of the country without  losing that cosmopolitanism which fits them to become citizens of the world; a faculty enjoying the bounties of academic freedom yet fully conscious of their moral responsibilities toward their students and their country, an inspiration in the classroom and on the campus yet researchers and scholars within their laboratories and their libraries - these and the hundred more elements complete the picture of an ideal university.

Higher Learning Free and Serene

The ideal university must live a free life, cooperating with, yet financially independent of, the vital political and economic forces of the country; sympathetic toward national purposes and ideals yet free from the passions and inconsistencies of contemporary politics.

It will be a university conducted on a business basis where the peso must be made to run the longest way; but it must shun the business efficiency which stifles the creative spirit and produces mere bureaucrats and automatons. The university administrator must look rigorously into the financial side but must intrude as little as possible into the broad academic fieldwhereintellect must rule an empire all it's own, unhindered and unfettered.

Taking the University  to the People

The ideal university will not be content with merely conducting efficient instruction in the classroom, with having an up-to-date laboratory, or with merely forth men efficient in their respective trades. Two other activities must be added to the functions of modern society: the task of helping enlarge the stock of human knowledge and the duty of serving with technical help its own people and its own country. In fact, the ideal university will not be found simply of the campus or in the city where buildings are located. It will be found wherever its benevolent influence is felt, in the farthest plantation where its professors may be experimenting on the sugar cane, in the factories, which its chemists and engineers helped establish, in every town which its publications or lectures may reach, and in every home which opens its doors to its correspondence courses or to its radio messages.

Ideal?

Yes, I am only discussing my ideal university, for universities, like men, must have their ideals.