Basic HTML Version
complete, well-rounded education. And that requires so much more
than text-book knowledge, or development of the intellect alone.
It means development of personality, ability to express one's self,
instilling of character, training in true culture. This cannot be
achieved by class-room work alone.
As traditionally developed, the system of higher
education in America has come to measure the worth, importance, and
education of the individual by a definite yard-stick,---college
degrees. Personally I feel this has become a much abused, and
inadequate system. College degrees are conferred according to the
number of hours the student sits in the class-room armchair. They
do not measure such qualities as the acquirement of ambition,
vision, imagination, judgment, initiative. Nor do these class-room
methods, book-learning or laboratory work by themselves develop
these qualities, or impart understanding of life and its purpose
and its laws.
We cannot overlook the fact we live in a world of
established systems, and therefore AMBASSADOR must, of course,
conform to the system of credits leading toward a degree, based on
class-room hours. But, at AMBASSADOR students say they feel that
they definitely learn more and acquire more that will help them in
a practical way in life, in the AMBASSADOR campus life, outside
classes, than they learn in class here, or would elsewhere. Surely
it is the purpose of AMBASSADOR to recapture the "true values",
including development of personality, bringing out the best in
one's self, and acquirement of true culture---not the veneer of
sophistication, but that which is real and true and sincere, and
springs from the heart in a spirit of love.
As the background for some of the things I am planning
especially for girl students, may I, first, express some of our
deep-seated convictions which form our philosophical approach.
At AMBASSADOR we seek to teach and train young women for
every phase of life. If, during the past fifty years, the young
women of the world had not been instructed and trained as we plan
to train our girls, this world would not be in the chaotic plight
we see today. No nation can be better than its wives and mothers;
no community better than its women; no home happier than the wife
and mother in that home makes possible; and no girl can become a
happy, successful woman unless she has learned the mystery of life
---its real purpose, and the laws that inexorably govern it and
lead either to a most satisfying accomplishment, happiness and joy,
or if violated to embittered despair, frustration, self-
condemnation, loss of happiness and everything one desires in life.
While the general calling, purpose, and natural function
of the woman is to be a happy, inspiring, intelligent and
successful wife, mother and homemaker, yet the exigencies of
today's world make it desirable or necessary for many, prior to
marriage or even after, to find some desirable employment. There-
fore our purpose at AMBASSADOR in developing courses for girl
students is threefold: 1) a general and cultural liberal arts
education, including in a most practical manner education and
training in a true knowledge of life---its real purpose---the