Correspondence School Memories

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

It can hardly escape the general observation of advertisement-lovers that educational opportunity is being enlarged and varied by an adaptation of the ancient Socratic, or catechetical, method to the postal facilities of the present century; and that, whereas formerly the student had to leave home and seek education, education, so to speak, is now leaving home and seeking the student. Many of us, to be sure, merely look at the pictures and skim carelessly over the text, wondering in an idle way whether anybody ever really does go to correspondence school, and forgetting that advertisements are not written and printed solely for entertainment. Thus unwittingly we pass the portals of an invisible institution, with a real faculty busily correcting in colored inks the examination papers of a host of students, each earnestly trying to develop great, but hitherto unsuspected, powers of feeling, observation, concentration, and thought. This invisibility makes advertising necessary. Other institutions of learning, older, gregarious, and visible in many objective ways, are indirectly and inexpensively advertised by these very characteristics. In the one case, as is common knowledge, the matriculant is customarily sent by parent or guardian; in the other, as we could not know without advertising, he sends himself. ‘Why,’ he has asked himself frankly, ‘do others, less intelligent than I, succeed where I have failed?' Harvard or Yale would hardly deign to answer this anxious question — but Correspondence School does answer it: The others have learned how to USE their minds. Nor are they really ‘less intelligent than I,’ for we are all of equal intelligence if we only knew it, and these embarrassing and discouraging differences exist only because we don’t. Different men, to be sure, will use a mind differently, — this one will make himself a great dramatist, that one a great scientist, another a great plumber, and another a great chiropractor, — but the splendid tradition of Correspondence School is that one mind, as such, is just as good as another. If, however, a man wishes to learn how to USE a mind he must WORK.

When I went to Correspondence School myself I was in doubt whether I had any mind at all. I had started to write an essay for the Atlantic, but the beginning was unpropitious; as Mr. Roget would have said, it was dull, prosaic, prosing, unentertaining, unlively, flat, pointless, stolid, stupid, plodding, humdrum, Bœotian, witless, reasonless, imbecile, weak, soft, sappy, feeble-minded, half-witted, shallowpated, beetle-headed, driveling, puerile, and fatuous. It got nowhere, and it drooled as it went. I am an advertisement-lover, and had often enjoyed the pictures and text of the correspondenceschool advertisements — and, after all, there might be something in this notion of learning how to USE your mind! It would do no harm to send for the free booklet. ‘Very few people,’ said the booklet, ‘really know themselves. They imagine they are this or that, and blunder through life the victims of their own ignorance. . . . The call is for the quick, leaping brain that is able to create ideas, to find fresh points of view, to make decisions as logical as they are swift, and to manufacture opportunities instead of waiting for them.’ If my brain was like that it seemed reasonable to believe that I could get forward with my Atlantic essay; and it appeared also that the price of tuition had been temporarily reduced. Presently I received my number, my first lesson-book, and the first list of questions by the professor himself. ‘You are unique,’said the lesson-book. ‘In the world of business, in the world of science, in the world of art, in the world of thought, in the world of pleasure, every day and on every hand’ — yea, even in the office of the Atlantic — ‘one great cry of need goes forth, the cry for originality. If only you would hear it aright, it is the cry of the world for YOU. . . . Because you alone can fill this need the world will pay you, and pay you generously’ — note that, Atlantic Monthly—‘to do so.’ That, however, was for the future. The thing to do now was to shut the door, muffle the telephone, and study the lessonbook; to make my time-table of academic work—‘On Tuesday you may be out all evening at a social function, but if it causes you to travel by train or subway, your time-table will contain a note to that effect and the necessary book will be put into your pocket’ — and begin the prescribed exercises for the development of my latent powers of observation and sense-perception. (It would have been unsportsmanlike to have even peeked at the professor’s questions before studying the lessonbook and beginning the exercises.)

It was 10.37 by my time-table when I went out on the back porch and did Exercise II. ‘Take up a position inside the house or outside — anywhere, indeed, that sense appeals are possible— and write down what you see, hear, or otherwise experience. Specimen of Report. You would write something like this: “I heard a train whistle, a motor car ‘honked’ in the distance. Saw a swallow fly past the window. Heard a strange sound several times, but could not identify it. Smelt frying bacon, and wondered on what food the pigs had been fed. Counted the shades of green in the foliage. There were five.” ‘ And as I went to sleep that night I wondered if the time would ever come when I too, if I smelt frying bacon, would feel also a quick, intelligent wonder as to what the pigs had been fed on.

But it is, after the first excitement, a lonely way of going to school. I now and then wondered why our Alma Mater did not provide us with some modest insignia—a button, pin, hatband, arm-band, or even a common necktie in some official Correspondence School colors — whereby we might know each other. There is much to be said for some such mark of identification. As things now are, Nos. 47642, 47670, 48100, and 48196, for example, might live on the same street, and yet be no better acquainted than No. 47760, who lives in Maine, and No. 48101, who lives in Texas. Friendships cannot ripen under such circumstances. A modest button, perhaps decorated with the features of Socrates, need add little or nothing to the cost of tuition; it would open the way for a heartier and more attractive undergraduate life, permit the organization of fraternities, athletic teams, glee clubs, and other student interests that make formal advertising unnecessary for the older and gregarious institutions, and encourage the getting together of alumni in the same neighborhoods. I should have liked at least to have a photograph of my professor. As the course progresses, however, and the imagination of the student develops, he can imagine his professor and classmates, and in this exercise he will be greatly helped by his improving memory for the advertisements and the free booklet. At the foot of the class, I used to think, was the young man who had been unable to concentrate on his clerical duties — Mr. Scatterbrain, as Bunyan would have called him; and perhaps you have seen his picture. He looked stupid. He tipped back his chair, and eased his feet on a convenient drawer of his desk. What went on in his undisciplined mind was printed in the smoke of his cigarette. ‘Must be near lunch time,’ he thought. ‘Wish I had $500 — HATE BOSS — Florida — Girl with a red hat — Why don’t I get a raise?’ Then one day he heard, like me, that the only trouble with him was that he did n’t know how to USE his mind, and now he is with us.

But he must work, WORK! Oh, it will not be easy for Mr. Scatterbrain — nothing like so easy, I fear, as he fancied it would be when he joined the class. No more of that amorous mental dalliance with red-hatted females! ‘The power to create a vast business, or to solve a profound problem in mathematics, or to discover a great law like gravitation is said to be the offspring of thought, but every success in thinking has two accompaniments: the inward urge and hard work.’ More than once it will be necessary for him to grit the teeth of his mind and recall what Lesson No. 1 revealed to him and me and all of us about our unsuspected Selves.

And who shall say that those unsuspected Selves, in some way that we are incapable even of suspecting, do not meet and mingle and go arm-in-arm about our campus, which is as large as the continent? I like to think so. Good fellows all, male and female, we were a varied lot of undergraduates, — accountants, actresses, army officers (as I take a few at random from the occupational list of students in the free booklet), dietitians, diplomats, funeral directors, hatters, shoemakers, social workers, tree surgeons, valets, wireless operators, woolsorters, and writers, — all so busy, apart and yet together, with our professor’s question: ‘(a) Do you arrive at conclusions quickly? (b) Confidently? (c) Correctly? (d) If not, what do you believe to be the hindrance?’ I wonder how Mr. Scatterbrain is answering it. Probably (a) Yes. (b) Yes. (c) Yes. (d) Girl with a red hat.

Mens sana in corpore sano. Every morning, apart and yet together, we do our physical exercises (a) in bed and (b) out of bed. Every morning we practise relaxation, and become for the moment like so many drooping plants, each in a separate garden bedroom. All together we exhale our breath and our ideas of worry, anxiety, fear, hurry, ill-nature, resentment, ugliness, effort, striving, and doubt. All together we fill our memories and imaginations with sweet and restful things — ‘for instance,’ says the lesson-book, ‘the delicious moment that comes after relief from toothache.’ All together we inhale, and as the fresh air flows into us we know that in the future our health, our sanity, our poise, our power, will depend not only on food but also on repose. And then perchance We go out to practise our exercise for Will and Effort: ‘From among the people whom you find boring or irritating, choose the greatest offender of all, and accept the first opportunity of conversing with him (or her). Display a genial and accommodating attitude throughout.’ This I found to be a particularly stiff exercise.