Leacock's idea of a college

 Stephen Leacock, a wonderful essayist, wrote this about education:

“If I were founding a university — and I say it with all the seriousness of which I am capable, I would found first a smoking room; then when I had a little more money in hand I would found a dormitory, then after that, or more properly with that, a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had money over that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some textbooks.”

I copied that sentence into a notebook when I was a college student. I think it appeared originally in 1920 in The New York Times as “The Need for Dormitories at McGill.” I read a version of it in a collection of Leacock’s familiar essays.

Leacock’s theme was that a student learns from his environment, by talking with other students or interested faculty members. What student read and what they hear in the lecture hall is important. But it’s the discussion, the conversation, that’s vital. From those conversations new questions emerge, and learners find new interests to pursue.

Of course, the idea of a smoking room is gone now, replaced by coffee house. But the point is that we all need a place for conversation. College is just a place where collegiality takes place. And a college without that atmosphere isn’t a place of learning. 

I copied that paragraph into a notebook because I had discovered that what I wanted most was to be a lifelong learner. I didn’t plan an academic career, which meant that I would have to cultivate a good environment myself. It wouldn’t come ready made.

Yesterday’s post about a running conversation was one example of a learning environment.

A good coffee shop is another.

For years, as a newspaper editor in Galveston, I made it a point to start my day at the Mod Coffeehouse on Postoffice Street. I’d meet different people, learn about different things, hear different points of view.