Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/14

4 coloring. A speaker goes to them from one of the universities and explains the extension plan. If the impression produced be favorable and the question of ways and means do not hinder, the meeting results in the formation of a local center, and a permanent secretary and a board of managers are appointed. A subject is then chosen, and application made to one of the central offices for a lecturer. In many cases a particular lecturer is asked for, as the extension men are coming to have pretty widely known reputations, and the public naturally selects the most popular. The question of finance now comes in. The universities supply qualified lecturers, arrange courses, and hold examinations, but the expenses must be guaranteed by the local centers. The work does not pay for itself, but then no scheme for higher education ever does. The receipts from the sale of lecture tickets may generally be counted upon to meet half the expenses of the course. The rest must be provided for in some other way, commonly by subscriptions or by some larger benefaction. The university fee for the twelve lectures is about £45, and the local expenses will generally amount to about £20 more. This is for a single course. Where more than one course is taken, the proportionate expense is somewhat less.

In most cases the local center is an outgrowth from some library association or institute, and has already much of the needed machinery in the way of hall and books. The course is duly advertised and as strong a local interest enlisted as possible. The audience is made up of all classes, the more miscellaneous the better. The extension movement recognizes no class distinctions. It includes the gentry, mechanics, school-teachers, barristers, tradesmen—all, indeed, who will come. The work differs from that of the school, as it is primarily for the education of adults, and its methods have men and women in mind as the material.

And now the lecture begins. It lasts for about an hour, the lecturer endeavoring not so much to present the whole of the subject-matter of the evening as to give a distinct and helpful point of view from which his hearers may look at it for themselves. It seems to me that this is a most hopeful feature of the extension work, and one which brings it into direct line with the best of modern educational practice. It is the spirit of the new education to proceed always by appealing to the self-activity of the taught rather than simply to their capacity for receiving.

If the lecturer be skillful, the hour seems very short, for the feeling is abroad that here is a man thinking out loud and suggesting a whole lot of new thoughts which will make one distinctly the richer. It is a pleasant sensation, recalling the very cream of