The mission of Dartmouth College has evolved through the years, as it should. The needs of our country and society have changed, and the College has sought to meet those needs. This year, the College has new leadership and new focus. It may be time to take another look, to think about where we have been, and where we want to go.
In the beginning, nearly all of the earliest colleges in America were established by religious orders to prepare leaders for their churches and to "Christianize" the population. Eleazar Wheelock's mission was to instruct students and form "their minds and manners to rules of religion and decency." Harvard was established in 1636 by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a "sacred obligation" to provide a trained civil service and an educated ministry. Reverend John Harvard bequeathed his library and half his property, "dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches." Brown was founded by Baptists, Princeton by Presbyterians, Penn by Quakers. Yale's mission, as expressed in its Charter, was typical: "a Collegiate School ... wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & Sciences who through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church & Civil State."
By the time Cornell was founded in 1865, the missions of elite schools had shifted to focus more on service to society than service to the church. Andrew White, Cornell's first president, explained that the mission of the school was "to develop the individual man, ... as a being intellectual, moral, and religious; and to bring the force of the individual to bear on society."
At the end of the 19th century, the formation of the land-grant universities began to influence all of higher education. The Morrill Act of 1862 established the universities "to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanical arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life." The land grant schools were formed for practical purposes to achieve practical results. As the influence of public institutions grew, private universities, too, began to focus more on research and the expansion of knowledge. By 1940, the private mission of educating the character and spirit had begun to fade, and the religious foundations had all but disappeared.
The current Dartmouth mission, as described in the Planning Steering Committee Report of 1990, focuses primarily on "fostering a love of learning." I love this mission, and yet for me it is not enough. Places like Dartmouth have a special responsibility because they embody and convey a special privilege. Learning without noble purpose, without responsibility, without heart, is not enough.
Few would suggest that Dartmouth should return to its original mission of Christianizing its students, or that the College should dedicate itself to educating leaders of the "Church" (whatever that "Church" might be these days). Conversely, few would assert that our world is so virtuous, so free from moral ambiguity, and so fortunate in the character of our leadership that we should abandon any thought of educating the character of our society. The founders of the great Ivy institutions clearly focused on educating for the "Publick" good, rather than private gain. This mission has not lost its relevance or its nobility.
Even if Dartmouth were to adopt a mission that included the education of character and conscience, what would this mean? How would we teach it? Who would teach it? What a discussion that would be. Perhaps this is not so much a subject for our classes as an expectation for the way Dartmouth sons and daughters will live their lives. "Though round the girdled earth they roam, her spell on them remains." Surely that spell should be more than the daze of nostalgia. Wouldn't it be grand if Dartmouth cast a spell of nobility and compassion, giving every Dartmouth graduate a bigger heart as well as a better mind?
