Our Girl Students and Social Responsibility

"It is better for a man to light a small candle than to curse the darkness." — Confucius

"And among the most important aims of higher education is to accustom girl students to carrying their torches, however small they may be."

"It is better for a man to light a small candle than to curse the darkness."

This is the motto chosen by the social projects committee at the American College for Girls — as a principle to guide it. It is one of the sayings of Confucius, the sage of China, and it is symbolized by a candle engraved on a ring which the college presents to every young woman who embodies the spirit of social responsibility in its loftiest sense.

This, upon my life, is the finest motto this institution could have chosen to adopt — an institution that one man of letters described as laboring in this East to guide a company of aspiring young women, each one of them a candidate to become a beacon in her surroundings and an example in her country.

Among the most important aims of higher education is to accustom girl students, while they are still at their school desks, to carrying their torches, however small; and to remind them that great works are built up out of small deeds, that a small candle can scatter the darkness and light the way before one who has gone astray, just as a little leaven can leaven the whole dough.

Perhaps the most important national and social guidance the colleges perform is the planting of this noble feeling in the souls of the girl students.

In this ideal atmosphere the student prepares herself for the highest kind of life, wherein she realizes that life is a mission which she must carry out in the most perfect manner and with the noblest intent — taking knowledge as a means of reform and an instrument of building.

In this university setting the young woman is trained in true leadership joined to a living human conscience, one that makes her feel that outside the home and the school she has a nation demanding positive work of her — a nation calling upon her to light her candle, however small it may be, instead of cursing the darkness. And in order to bear the burden of this responsibility in the fullest way, she must equip herself with sound culture joined to integrity of soul, while giving ear to the voice of conscience that rouses her, calling her to the reform of society along humane lines — and the college's educational mission is nothing other than this sense of social responsibility.

And since the college holds that these aims can be realized only by means of effective practical programs, it endeavors to give the student suitable opportunities to show her capabilities and to shape them truly according to the needs of the country — by studying the problems of city and village and obtaining ample information.

But mere information is not enough; a second step must follow it, namely the work of application and effective participation in social undertakings, in Beirut and beyond, in the city and the village. In Beirut we have a full program in varied fields, among the most important of which are:

The management of a free elementary school adjoining the college, with a nursery branch and a free dispensary, comprising some 170 boys and girls from among the poor children. A certified teacher stands at its head, but the overwhelming majority of the college's girl students take an effective part in the school's program and administration.

As for the instruction of adult women, our students take an actual part in the fight against illiteracy among the maidservants working at the college; for they found it a sin to leave those who serve them deprived of the light of learning while they themselves dwell in the midst of learning and knowledge, and so they volunteered to give them private lessons in their free hours.

Nor is the scope of their work confined to the college's own projects; it extends beyond them to the support of the charitable and social projects undertaken by most of the women's organizations and associations in the city — such as backing the child welfare project, where they take part in the financial campaign on Child's Day, and likewise supporting the project to combat the employment of juveniles. As for the Palestinian refugees, they have taken part, and still take an effective part, in gathering clothing and foodstuffs and distributing them, in working in the feeding kitchens, and in distributing food to the children.

At the beginning of this year they directed a special gathering toward the beautification and cleaning of the city of Beirut, working with the women's organizations and bodies that have taken upon themselves the fight against filth and the making of the city of Beirut a lofty model of exactness in order and cleanliness.

And since it is impossible for any nation to move forward while ignoring the villages that make up the greater part of our Arab lands, the college saw fit to turn the students' activity during the summer vacation toward the village — hence the village-revival project counts among the college's most important projects. The great development we find in the life of the villagers year after year, and the appreciation and admiration we meet with

from the inhabitants, give us added hope to carry on with this project.

There is another group of young women who cooperate with the Cooperation Club in the project of summer camps held for young women of various classes; and another team joins with the students of the American University of Beirut in setting up a free camp for poor boys who have been deprived of the delight of learning and of a sound upbringing.

Perhaps the most important benefits the girl students reap from these social works are the awakening of their feeling and their opening up to the problems of their society; their coming to know at close hand the needs of the country; their training in the true spirit of leadership, free of selfishness and the love of show; and, in consequence, the experience of that inward feeling and deep pleasure a person knows upon performing his human duty — that feeling of happiness which grows as the happiness of the beings around him grows. Works such as these cannot yield effective results unless the student grows up with them while still at school, where she reckons with them in her doings and touches them in her society, so that her spirit becomes steeped in them and she carries them out with all the greater ardor after her graduation from college. Indeed, the work of some of this institution's graduates in the social field bears out the truth of what I say.

And as I opened my talk with the saying of the sage of China, so shall I close it with the Chinese proverb that says:

"If you would plant for a year, plant wheat; if you would plant for ten years, plant trees; and if you would plant for a hundred years, plant men." And who but the conscious woman can create man anew? If we would plant for a hundred years, then let us plant women of whom we can make a leaven for good and a salt for reform — women who carry their torches high, fulfilling the saying of Confucius:

"It is better for a man to light a small torch than to curse the darkness."