Divided We Fall: Unity Without Tragedy

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DIVIDED WE FALL: UNITY WITHOUT TRAGEDY brings ordinary citizens together to wrestle with the complex issues that divide our nation. Breaking out of partisan echo chambers to listen to one another, the participants - equal numbers of whom strongly approve and disapprove of President Donald Trump - explore what it means to be an American.

K-State, distance learning, and a global health crisis: Then and now

We are now weeks into the new experience of social distancing, teaching remotely, and finding ways to continue our mission as a land-grant university with respect to teaching, research, and engagement because of a novel coronavirus, COVID-19. For many, it feels utterly foreign to not be able to interact with students, fellow researchers, or youth through 4-H programming. This has caused a rapid response to technologies that create the experience of being present as much as possible.

When we think about the radical nature of where we are today, it’s a helpful reminder that Kansas State University, generations ago, took many steps to provide remote instruction as part of a forgotten movement that helped define the public mission of land-grant universities at the turn of the 20^th century and beyond.

In America’s Forgotten Epidemic, Alfred Crosby detailed the great influenza known as the “Spanish Flu” that emerged in Haskell County and at Fort Riley in 1918 and impacted the world over. Recent estimates range from 50 to 100 million dead, considerably more than the 10 million military casualties. Crosby published his book’s second edition in 2003 on the heels of concern about then-contemporary outbreaks such as SARS. As he put it, “As I write this, SARS has spread …. It is well on its way to circling the globe in a matter of weeks.” He highlighted the importance taking seriously these health concerns. For an institution such as K-State as the future home of the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility, it is important to recognize, as Crosby put it, “The medical optimism circa 1976 is receding. America’s Forgotten Pandemic has at last attained contemporary relevancy.” We continue to confront challenges that some saw as belonging to the dustbin of history. We can learn from what took place a century ago.

So what did K-State do during the 1918 influenza? Land-grant institutions such as K-State were fulfilling their tripartite mission by educating students on campus and across the state. But how? One of the ways was through distance learning to engage diverse citizens. It’s easy to think of distance education as a relatively new experience, but it, in fact, has deep roots at K-State and at other land-grant universities. “Study by correspondence was promoted with vigor, and the staff of the department enlarged,” noted Julius Willard’s 1940 history about K-State during the late 1910s. The idea of asynchronous learning from people geographically dispersed and unable to pursue a degree on campus had gained traction during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. At K-State, the origins of providing education through correspondence study were in 1910 when the Board of Regents authorized Extension to establish such courses in various departments related to farm life. This work was increasingly broadened to include “reading courses, study centers, courses giving credit on college entrance, courses giving credit toward graduation from college, and special services.”

In July 1918, the Kansas State Agricultural College Bulletin published the announcement of courses and information for the Home-Study Service. As the Home-Study Bulletin noted,

“The Department of Home-study Service of the Division of College Extension was organized to form a close connecting link between the work of the resident classes and those who are doing extra-mural work. The instructors employed in this department were selected not only because of their technical preparation, but also because they have made a careful study of the methods of correspondence teaching.”

A visual on the cover of the 1918 and 1919 

Kansas State Agricultural College Bulletin highlighting

the way in which the state was the campus for the institution.

K-State had a commitment to providing education to Kansans beyond those who could be on campus in Manhattan. The following year, the Bulletin announcing courses for 1919 stated its work this way: “The Home-study Service is a part of the Extension Division of the Kansas State Agricultural College, designed to make the state its campus—to enable the College to come to those who cannot come to it.”

This sense of the State of Kansas as the campus was captured by the image found on the cover of both the 1918 and 1919 publications. Embodying similar principles to the famous “Wisconsin Idea” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, K-State saw its role through education in all parts of the state touching boys and girls, men and women alike. Through correspondence courses and other forms of learning managed by K-State, education was not limited to academic halls or research fields on campus. In a 1923 report on the state of higher education in Kansas, this sentiment was confirmed: “The whole State has thus become the campus of the institutions, and the people have been made to feel that, if they cannot go to the institutions, the institutions will go to them with a variety of courses….” Correspondence and home-study offerings were a popular way for Kansans to access education when they weren’t able to experience in-person education on campus. These alternative forms became opportunities for “odd hours of spare time” to “be made to count.”

It’s helpful to note this history because of the similarities of the 1918 influenza and COVID-19 today. Currently, during this time of the K-State community dispersed from the Manhattan campus and now returned home across the state and beyond, there is a valuable reminder that K-State has provided education during a global health crisis in its past.

While many of us spend considerable time utilizing modern technologies such as Zoom and Canvas, the useful technology of the day then for communicating over long distances—the postal service—was important but was not the defining characteristic. As a 1920 report on correspondence courses highlighted, “It is not, then, the intervention of the postal system which gives the correspondence study its virtue. The method of instruction is the essential thing.” It’s not simply that we’re teaching online, but how we’re doing it. After this period of time passes and we return to campus, there will be new technologies and resources that we’ve utilized today that will serve us in the future. While faculty have learned new ways of engaging students because of this current crisis, we might bring some of our newfound knowledge to courses when we finally meet again in Nichols, Waters, and Justin Halls because of the educational benefits to doing so.  

Finally, as we look back to the period of that two-year global pandemic more than a century ago, it’s important to recognize that life continued. K-State continued to grow, especially as it related to what the institution was doing when it educated citizens, especially in such challenging times. A helpful reminder of that larger mission and purpose was stated by then President William Jardine. In his inaugural address in February 1919, President Jardine noted:

“In the realm of the college proper, it shall be the aim of our teaching in the future, as in the past, to give training of the highest professional type in the fundamental sciences and liberalizing subjects, as well as thorough training in the several technical curricula. Emphasis will be placed also on the practical viewpoint. We want students to know the problems that are to be solved and to be able to meet men and women of the work-a-day world on a common ground of understanding. In a larger way the aim of our teaching and training will be to produce not only the practical agriculturist, engineer and housekeeper, but also young men and women trained for leadership, young men and women who have been led, through a study of the social relations combined with professional and practical training, to have a larger vision of the duty of college trained men and women as leaders in community development.”

This commitment to helping students gain technical knowledge and expertise, a commitment to practical application, and a “larger vision” of duty is a theme that shaped K-State in 1919 and continues today. The “new education,” to use Jardine’s phrase, “must embody in it the larger, broader aim of training for citizenship.” In today’s terminology, we would refer to those with technical knowledge and a commitment to a larger purpose as civic professionals. As we engage one another using Zoom during COVID-19, we would do well to remember previous generations of K-State faculty and students who dealt with their own serious challenges. A century ago, faculty were encouraged to educate students to have a “larger vision” and to see them as “leaders.” While it might be in the backs of our minds, we do well to remember our role in furthering K-State’s mission of helping to develop a highly skilled and educated citizenry necessary to advancing the well-being of Kansas, the nation, and the international community.