Essays on the Higher Education/Chapter 3
EDUCATION, NEW AND OLD
There are few things more astonishing than the rapidity and apparent ease with which periods of conservative thinking and practice are sometimes followed by great and even radical changes. Opinions which have long been regarded as having the necessary quality of rational principles are at such times contested and discarded; practices that have come to be associated with sacred ideas of duty and of religion are deemed unreasonable and are abandoned. Indeed, in this generation and land of ours, such great and radical changes have become so frequent as almost to fail of exciting the astonishment they really merit. Moreover, there are few subjects—at least among those concerning which the world has commonly been supposed to have settled conclusions on the basis of a sufficient experience—that are just now ina more precarious condition than that of education. For tens of centuries the so-called civilized world has discussed and practised touching the question how best to train the young. For a less number of centuries a considerable part of the civilized world has been much at its ease in the gratifying belief that it was answering the question wisely. But now the New Education, as brought to our notice afresh by Professor Palmer's article in the November number of this Review, claims to have made beyond doubt the discovery that the answer hitherto practically given must be almost completely reversed. The language used by the article alluded to is not a bit too strong to express the completeness of the proposed reversal, The New Education has avowedly thrown away an "established principle;" has organized a college "from the top almost to the bottom on a wholly different plan;" has wrought "a revolution like that in the England of Victoria."
It would be an error to suppose, however, that even so revolutionary a change in education should be denied fair consideration, on the ground that what seems to contradict a well-nigh universal experience cannot, of course, be wise and true. If the New Education should finally come to have matters according to its liking in all our educational institutions, such a change of custom would not be wholly without a parallel in the history of the subject. It would perhaps not be greater than the change which took place in the culture of Greek youth when the Sophists captivated them all by adding rhetoric and dialectic to the ancient disciplines of music, mathematics, and gymnastics. Nor can it be wholly forgotten that the ancient classics only a few centuries since turned out much of the theology and metaphysics from the universities of Europe, in order to make a place for themselves as the new learning of the day. The truth is, that poetry, mathematics, and philosophy are about the only branches of human knowledge that have everywhere and in all times been regarded as studies indispensable to what the civilized world has agreed to call culture. Yet these are perhaps the studies which are at present least prized of all by that class of youth who are fired with the ambition to choose wholly for themselves a training suited to the so-called "practical life" of business, politics, journalism, etc.
Accordingly, we are not among those who, when startling new views are proposed in opposition to ancient convictions and customs, refuse to tolerate the possibility of such views being largely or mainly trustworthy. But, on the other hand, the advocates of the New Education can scarcely expect, in the exercise of fairness and good judgment, that a scheme which they admit to be no less than "revolutionary" should be hastily caught at for its novelty by thoughtful educators. Professor Palmer's description of the Harvard method calls upon us all to discard many cherished convictions; we may justly expect it to enforce its call with many and valid reasons. It asks for a large faith; we may ask of it some assured pledge that the faith will not be misplaced. It seems to me, then, that little fault could be found with any educator of youth, whose mind worked in a moderately conservative fashion, if he should decline to estimate highly the detailed facts which make up the very limited experience of the New Education. In other words, I do not think that the trial of the Harvard method is yet old enough to be critically weighed and pronounced upon. It is true that the elective system was adopted there, to a certain small extent, as long ago as 1825. But until 1879 "some prescribed study remained" for juniors; till 1884 for sophomores. During only a single year have freshmen in Harvard College chosen a majority of their own studies. But it is precisely to making all of the last two years of the college course elective, and to giving any considerable play to the elective system in the earlier years, that the opponents of the Harvard method have most decided objections. For it by no means follows that, because some choice of his own studies is good for the young man of twenty-one or twenty-two years, therefore the entire control of his studies should be committed to the boy from eighteen to twenty. As to whether it is wise that freshmen and sophomores should be placed completely under the elective system, Harvard itself has, then, barely two years of experience; and for the upper classes only a few years more. No graduates of the New Education have yet gone out into the world. But it will surely take more than one whole generation to prove what the real and final outcome of so profound changes in education is to be. Is it ungenerous toward progress when we declare that the experience of a single educational institution for scarcely a moiety of its four years' course—whatever that experience may have been—is a very inadequate proof of the desirableness of a "revolution" in education? We cannot sample the orchard by chewing the blossoms of a single tree.
Let it not be supposed, however, that there is reason to shrink from the detailed examination of the statistics with which Professor Palmer has argued the cause of the New Education. For one, I heartily thank him for them. They are so clearly and fairly presented, and so courteously urged, that nothing more in that direction can be for the present demanded. I am especially glad to have the affair of passing his article in critical review take so tangible a shape. It gives me a coveted opportunity to bring forward corresponding statistics which have not been formed under the influence of the Harvard method. It thus becomes a task definitely set me by the editors of the "Andover Review" to compare one college with another. I need not apologize, to remove any of that odium which almost inevitably attaches itself to such work of comparison. The question of fact is raised by the previous article commending the so-called New Education: How does it work? What better way to answer the question thus raised than to compare the tabulated results (so far as such results can be tabulated) of the new method with those reached by a somewhat different method? I select Yale to compare with Harvard, as a matter of course, for I am a teacher at Yale, and can most easily obtain trustworthy statistics concerning educational affairs in my own college. Moreover, there is a certain fitness in comparing these two great institutions. Harvard is avowedly the only thorough representative of what Professor Palmer calls the New Education; Yale is certainly the leading representative of those more conservative tendencies in education to which what is called "new" is understood to be opposed. I shall, therefore, follow his argument from experience, point by point, showing how the results of experience here compare with those obtained at Harvard under its new method.
Before bringing forward statistics, and thus putting myself into the attitude of an antagonist or carping critic toward Professor Palmer, I crave the opportunity of expressing my sympathy and agreement with him on several important points. It is true that the world of science and learning has changed and enlarged with wonderful rapidity of late. It is, of course, also true that both the matter and the method of education must change accordingly. The literary communication of nations is now such that no man can be the most successful student of any subject who is not able to use at least two or three of those languages in which the results of modern researches are chiefly recorded. The ancient classics can never again hold the same relatively great or exclusive place in the study of language, or as mental discipline. The new science, psychological and political, no less than physical, will certainly have its rights regarded. The subject-matter of education must change. It is also true that methods of education must change. The modern teacher stands in a different relation to his pupils from that held by the teacher of bygone days. He has a larger work than that of giving out tasks; he must rely on something more in his hearers than their reverence for his ex-officio dignity and their readiness to accept his ipse dixit. He must also stand in relations towards his pupils that are different from those which formerly obtained with respect to their discipline in manners and morals.
But it is simple matter of fact that all our most respectable educational institutions are recognizing the facts and truths to which I have just alluded, and are recognizing them in practical ways. Surely no most excessive admirer of Harvard and its methods would think of denying that other colleges also have made a large place for the new sciences, are using improved ways of instruction with fresh enthusiasm on the part of both teachers and pupils, and have their eyes and hearts open to all that is going on in the wide world of science and learning. No one acquainted with Yale at present, as compared with Yale fifty or even twenty-five years since, could for a moment doubt that much of its education is worthy of being called "new."
With the ethical spirit of Professor Palmer's article I am also in the fullest accord; he meets a hearty response from the Yale method when he proposes to measure the success of education by standards that are strong and high in an ethical way. I, too, understand the end of education to be not merely information in certain subjects—few or many—of scientific or historical research, but, also and chiefly, control of the faculties, and vigorous, reasonable, symmetrical use of them for the attainment of worthy ideals. And if he will show me that the so-called New Education really does "uplift character as no other training can, and through influence on character ennoble all methods of teaching and discipline," I will not wait to be his ardent convert. It is precisely because of my fears that it will not accomplish this in the majority of cases that I am reluctant to accept the methods it proposes. But Professor Palmer advances the statistical proofs that in very truth the method has already wrought to this desirable and noble end at Harvard. We are brought around, then, to his statistics in our effort to come into the fullest possible sympathy of view with his opinions. Do the statistics show, or even tend to show, the superiority of the method of education in force at Harvard, as compared with that still employed at Yale? I am prepared to affirm that they do not. I am prepared to affirm that, in all the matters which can fairly be said to be direct desirable results of the methods of teaching employed by the two institutions, the figures speak rather against than for the New Education. The various items of proof will be arranged for consideration in the order which seems most convenient, but all the points made by Professor Palmer will be covered before leaving the subject.
Among the various proofs of experience that the New Education is successful we find the enlargement and improvement of the prevalent student idea of a "gentleman." Students are proverbially influenced by consideration for "good form." It is no longer "good form" at Harvard to haze freshmen, smash windows, disturb lecture-rooms, etc. Such things as these are largely, if not wholly, at an end. Now the growth away from barbarous and rowdyish customs has characterized all the colleges of the land,—some of them to a greater, some to a less degree. A marked improvement in these regards has gone on at Yale, until the more offensive forms of such misbehavior are matters of tradition and of the past. It could be shown by all the testimony possible to obtain on such a, point that both the major and the minor morals of the students have steadily improved for the last twentyfive or more years. The relations between the Faculty and the students, instead of the old feeling of antagonism or division of interest, are cordial and tending to more and more of friendliness and co-operative work. This is perfectly well understood by the students themselves; it is remarked upon in their conversation and in the papers which they publish. But I should not for a moment suppose that the same kind of improvement had not taken place—at least to some considerable degree—in other institutions of learning; nor should I venture to attribute it largely to any peculiar method of education, either as partly elective or as largely prescribed. Such improvement is chiefly the result of the steady change in our civilization which has been going on, of better manners everywhere, of the gradual decay of barbarous and mediæval antagonisms, of the spread of kindliness and intelligence. It is also due, in special, to the fact that teachers and parents take a different attitude toward the young under their charge, and that the young themselves have a wider outlook on life. It is also due to the fact that college Faculties have relaxed in many of their old severities and petty exactions, and have taken the young men—whether by some scheme devised or by the common consent of all hearts and wills—more into their confidence. It is also due to the influence of well-regulated athletic sports, which provide an outlet for the expenditure of that surplus vitality in which youth rejoices. The New Education has no monopoly in these improvements. Nor do I believe that it can show any advantage in these matters as compared with that blending of things new and old which is prevalent at Yale.
It is also claimed that the New Education has the stamp of approval in the special amount of popular favor which it has secured. It is shown that the period during which the new method has been on trial has been one of "unexampled prosperity" for Harvard, its representative. Rich men have signified their acceptance of it by generous gifts. Parents and sons have ratified the system, as may be seen by the increase of numbers which has taken place under its working. There can be no doubt that the last fifteen years exhibit a splendid record of growth at Harvard, both in numbers and in resources. But it will scarcely be claimed by Professor Palmer that all the generous gifts it has received have been designed to set the seal of approval from their donors upon its peculiar methods. Other sums of money, even larger, have been given to found and rear institutions by rich men who had no ideas, either new or old, which they desired to perpetuate in a peculiar college system. Other colleges which have not adopted the Harvard system—except so far as some elective courses in a college curriculum may be said to be an adoption of the system—have also received bountiful gifts. During the last fourteen years the amount of gifts made to the university of Yale, either already delivered over or in the process of delivery by executors, exceeds $2,066,000; of this sum $928,400 stands upon the treasurer's books as cash paid in to the treasury since 1871; the remainder has gone into the "plant" of the university. During the same time the sum of more than $460,000 additional has been secured by bequest, to be paid into its treasury on the termination of certain lives. Meanwhile, its library has increased by 83,000 volumes. This more than two and a half millions may not, indeed, equal the sum given to Harvard during the same period. But it bears comparison with that sum so well as to raise the inquiry whether the prestige of the New Education with the long purses of the country is beyond question.
The increase of students is a more direct and appreciable argument. It certainly does go for something in showing how the popular favor is setting, at least for the immediate time. I can readily see how young men of eighteen, if left to themselves, would incline to give the authority of their presence to the methods of the New Education. Still, it is by no means certain that the large accessions to Harvard for the past twenty-five years signify all that they might seem to at first sight. During the same period other institutions, not adopting its method, have likewise had remarkable growth; on other grounds than its adoption Yale has constantly grown in numbers during this period. Its growth as estimated by the average number of undergraduates, exclusive of special students (which I suppose Professor Palmer also excluded from his estimate), has been as follows: 1861–65, 533; 1866–70, 610; 1871–15, 704; 1876–80, 745; 1880–84, 792. It should also be said that probably no other college has rejected so large a per cent. of candidates for admission, or sent away so many for failing to keep up to its standard of scholarship.
Even the most recent statistics throw still more doubt upon the argument from the number of students. It is found, by counting the under-graduates in the last Harvard catalogue, that 591 of the 1061, or more than 55 per cent., are from the State in which the college is situated. Only 247, or less than 32 per cent., of the undergraduates of Yale are from Connecticut. Not only relatively but absolutely, more men come to the latter than to the former institution from outside of the State in which it is situated. If, then, Massachusetts may be said to sanction the New Education, as yet the country at large cannot be said to have done so. It is not yet cosmopolitan.
But we shall better appreciate the statistical argument for and against the New Education if we compare figures concerning matters that may more fairly be held to indicate its direct results; and among them, first, the amount of regular attention given by the students to the college exercises, to lectures and recitations. Professor Palmer thinks it creditable to the method he advocates that, by actual count, under a wholly voluntary and wholly elective system, the last senior class at Harvard "had cared to stay away" only two exercises per week out of twelve,—that is, rather more than sixteen per cent. of the whole. Now the point of fidelity and regularity is of such supreme importance in the life of the student that I have taken especial pains to secure its statistics here; the reader is requested thoughtfully to compare them with the statement of Professor Palmer. At Yale this term, for the seven weeks for which the record is complete, the average per cent. of absence in the class of '89 has been 8.7 per cent.; that is, the average freshman of the Academical Department has been present 15.4 out of a possible 16 of his weekly recitations. This record includes absences from all causes whatever; it includes 48 absences due to the illness of one man for three weeks, and several other cases of absence due to illness of the student or of his friends. The record of the sophomore class for the same period is even slightly better; for the average sophomore has attended 14.5 exercises per week out of a possible 15 required. The absences of this class have been only slightly more than three and a third per cent. It should further be mentioned that under the rules all tardiness at a recitation beyond five minutes and all egresses are counted as absences. Moreover, if the student chooses to be present without responsibility for being questioned, he has the privilege of doing so at the expense of one of his "allowed" absences. In the aggregate a considerable number avail themselves of this privilege. For an example of diligent attention to the business of learning, I think it would be hard to find anything superior to the following: On a recent week (in November) there were only eight absences in a division of 84 men, and three of these were so-called "cuts," when the student was present but not reciting. That is to say, the real absences were for that one division during the period of a week only a trifle over one per cent. It should be remembered, also, that no excuses are now given for sports, attentions to friends, minor ailments, etc.; and yet the average Yale freshman or sophomore does not avail himself of more than about three fourths of the six absences allowed him during a term to cover all such cases. Nor should it be inferred that the regularity of these seven weeks is special to any large extent, as being due to causes prevalent during the earlier part of the fall term of 1885. It is likely that the record for the entire term would make even a better showing; the spendthrifts who incur most absences on the whole, as a rule, use up their "cuts" early in the term. The officer in charge of the records assures me that, on looking over them cursorily, he concludes that the worst terms for some years past would not show more than five per cent. of absences in these classes. The amount of absence in the two upper classes is somewhat greater. There is good reason for this. The junior and senior classes contain more men who are of age, who therefore go home to vote, have private business out of New Haven to which they must attend, etc. Under the rules of the college they are also given one third more of "allowed absences" than the lower classes,—that is to say, eight in a term instead of six. But for all causes combined, exclusive of a few cases of sickness lasting more than a week, the irregularity of the junior class during the period under consideration was less than five and a half per cent.; that of the senior class only a trifle more than six per cent.
A comparison of the two systems as actually at work in Harvard and in Yale shows, then, this remarkable fact: The irregularity of the average Harvard student is from a little less than three to about five times as great as that of the average Yale student. The former is off duty, either from choice or compulsion, rather more than sixteen per cent. of his time; the latter from less than three and a third to a trifle more than six per cent. Such discrepancy is remarkable. In my opinion, it is highly significant as respects the working of the two systems. Let the reader inquire of himself what its significance must be as regards preparation, both intellectual and ethical, for the work of life. Let any man in business or in professional life ask himself this question: What sort of work should I do, what success have, if I and my employees were absent sixteen per cent. of the entire time allotted for work? More particularly with reference to the life of education, let each one interested in the problem propose such questions as follow: What service would the public school or academy render which permitted an average non-attendance of its pupils amounting to sixteen per cent. of the entire time; or, in other words, reduced the school-days of the week to about four in number? Is there any adequate reason why a youth who is being trained to a life of faithful and patient work should, for a term of four years in the most critical period of his life, enjoy a freedom from restraints which belongs to the well-regulated discipline of neither man nor boy? The average pupil under the New Education, if he has been properly fitted for college, has probably had no such liberty allowed him hitherto; unless he leads after leaving college a life of self-indulgence instead of successful industry, he will never have such liberty again. Is there any magic of morals which makes it best that he should for this particular quaternion be put "upon honor" in a manner different from that to which the rest of the working world is compelled? But it is at best the average man at Harvard who is off duty sixteen per cent. of his time; what, then, must be the amount of irregularity characterizing the more faithless half or quarter of each class?
I have no hesitation whatever in saying that it would be quite impossible for students to pass through Yale College who did not attend more regularly to their duties than the average senior under the New Education. Such students probably could not finish a single year. It must not be supposed, however, that attendance is exacted of the Yale student in such manner as to crush out all spontaneity of impulse, and make both recitation-room and teacher repulsive. Doubtless there is a considerable percentage of men in every college who find all mental work a hardship; with a few, the more and the more regular the work, the greater their sense of hardship. But with the body of students at Yale the case is not so. Their spirit will compare most favorably with that which Professor Palmer describes as characteristic of the New Education. That they are not merely driven by severe rules to their tasks is shown by the fact that, as I have already said, the average Yale student does not avail himself of all his allowed absences. It is also shown by the fact that a considerable percentage of men, especially in the upper classes, are ready to take over-hours of work; this in spite of the fact that the required number of recitations at Yale is fifteen (or sixteen) per week, instead of twelve as at Harvard. It is further shown by the large use which the students make of the libraries. On this point, then, let us compare facts with the New Education. Professor Palmer considers it a triumph for "the system" that the extent to which the college library is consulted by the undergraduates has increased from fifty-six per cent. in 1860–61 to eighty-five per cent. in 1883–84. But for years past the average Yale student, so far as the statistics of the respective libraries show, has been more a reader of books than his Harvard fellow under the present high estate reached by the New Education. During the year selected for comparison (1883–84) the undergraduates of Yale drew from "Linonian and Brothers" alone 18,440 volumes; all but 76 —or eighty-eight per cent.—of the academical students, and all but 88—or eighty-two per cent. of the scientific students used this collection of books. More than eighty-six per cent., that is, of all the undergraduates drew out to the average amount of 26 volumes each. As to the quality of the books drawn, no record is easily obtainable for this particular year; but the record for a previous year shows that more than two thirds were not books of fiction. Statistics just published for the last year show that the academical sophomores alone drew 4,139 volumes from this library; but the sophomores at Yale are denied all benefit from the New Education. The use of Linonian and Brothers' Library by the undergraduates, however, has been relatively decreasing, on account of the large increase in the use of other collections of books more recently placed at their convenient disposal. Noteworthy among such collections are the loan libraries belonging to some of the departments of instruction,—especially of political science, history, etc. Add to all these items the increasing use, by consultation on the spot and otherwise (of which statistics are not easily attainable), of the main college library, and we have an amount of voluntary literary activity among the Yale undergraduates which certainly need not shrink from comparison with the best results of the Harvard system.
Professor Palmer says truly that "the charge of 'soft' courses is the stock objection to the elective system." He is, therefore, at considerable pains to show how wisely the juniors and seniors on the whole make their choices, and with no predominating disposition to shirk hard work. I regret that we are not told more particularly just how the lower classes exercise their option. For it is as to the lower classes that our main contention exists. In order to make his case good, it must be shown that boys of eighteen and nineteen, on entering college without a knowledge of what their pursuits in life will be or of what in reality most of the studies before them mean, are competent to compose the entire subject-matter of their own instruction. On my part, I am prepared to affirm that for wise choice of elective courses far more maturity of judgment and knowledge of various subjects than belong to the American youth at such a time in his life are highly desirable, if not imperatively necessary. So far as I can judge, the choices of the Yale juniors and seniors show more taste for hard work than is developed under the new system. It is noticeable that no course in the classics or higher mathematics is set down as being a favorite with the two upper classes at Harvard in 1883–84. But 54 juniors and 181 seniors are reported as having taken courses in "Fine Arts" for the present year. At Yale this term, however, 53 choices of courses in higher mathematics (calculus, vector analysis, etc.) have been made by juniors and seniors, and 179 choices in the ancient classics, 99 in Latin, and 80 in Greek, by the same classes. (1 give the number of choices rather than of men, as indicating better the amount of interest taken in a given subject.) It should be remembered, also, that each of these choices involves responsibility for the performance of a daily task, as distinguished from cramming for an examination. I am unable to say that the Harvard system has no statistics to match these. But I have a pretty firm conviction that students who have been kept regularly at hard work in prescribed courses for the first two years of a college course will be far more likely to enjoy hard work in the later years of that course.
The last remark would, of course, hold true only in case the standard of scholarship were kept well up, and the instruction made bracing and attractive. I am therefore led to examine briefly two other excellences which Professor Palmer ascribes to the New Education. It is, he thinks, steadily raising the rank which is reckoned "decent scholarship." This is apparently proved by a comparative statement of the "marks" received by the average Harvard student in the different classes for the different years since 1874–75. I will say frankly, but without intending to cast the least shadow of question over the sincerity with which the proof is offered, that I find myself unable to confide in it. I should not think of trying to compare the statistics of the marks given under any two systems; or even—for that matter—under different decades of the same system. The marks of the average student are, of course, higher under the elective system. One reason is to be found in the fact that so many students choose their electives with reference to the marks they expect to attain under the chosen instructor. The teacher, as well as the pupil, is known by his marks. And it is more of a test of a pupil's real merits, under the elective system, to inquire how many courses he takes under teachers that give hard work and low marks than how high a mark he is able to attain by judiciously choosing his courses. Under a system of study largely prescribed, the various eccentricities of the instructors in marking nearly cancel each other. But under a system wholly elective the comparative statistics of the marks are quite worthless to indicate the grade of real scholarship secured.
I feel some hesitation about extending my comparisons so as to cover one of the points which Professor Palmer has made. He testifies to the improvement which the New Education has wrought in the spirit and work of the instructors themselves. His testimony is, of course, to be accepted as conclusive upon this point. I should be very loath to admit, however, that the kind of spirit and method which he justly considers admirable in the teacher are inseparably connected with the system in vogue at Harvard. It seems to me that a teacher who suffers himself to grow dull and slack because his pupils must come to him whether or no is scarcely fit to be a teacher under any so-called system. Certainly there have been not a few inspiring instructors in our American colleges before the New Education was discovered. Is it at all likely that there will be only afew poor ones in case the triumph of the New Education is everywhere secured? Is it not even possible that certain methods of instruction may in time be developed by a system that makes so much depend upon the favor of those instructed which will not conduce to the highest efficiency in education?
A word of personal experience will be in place at this point. I cannot follow Professor Palmer, who looks back upon his college days and feels that more than half his studies should have been different. The studies in my college curriculum were wholly prescribed; they included the ancient classics in junior year, and calculus, both integral and differential. Like him, I was especially fond of Greek and philosophy; but I studied calculus with more carefulness on that very account. I learned to do patiently the things set me to do; to work hard and wait for the reward; to conquer every task—whatever it might be— before leaving it. And I would not give this bit of learning for all to be got from the most attractive elective courses of both Harvard and Yale.
But it is full time to recall thought to the real matter of disagreement between Professor Palmer and myself. Toward the close of his article we find the remark that, for lack of room, he cannot explain at length "why the elective system should be begun as early as the freshman year;" it is added, "surely not much room is needed." But, as I understand the matter, this is precisely what requires most room, both for explanation and for argument. In common with most colleges, Yale now permits considerable choice in the last two years of its curriculum; the elective courses now constitute eight fifteenths of the junior year, and four fifths of the senior. No choice, with the exception of one, between French and German, is permitted in the first two years. Now, of course, the question is entirely reasonable to ask of one who, like myself, approves heartily of so much of the elective system, Why not accept it throughout in the form adopted by Harvard? Why draw the line between sophomore and junior years rather than between freshman year in college and the last year in the fitting-school? Why prescribe any courses for the last two years in preference to giving the student full range for the exercise of his preferences? The reply to these questions might be given with an indefinite amount of detail. This whole question, like nearly all those questions which most perplex our human life, is one of drawing lines and making distinctions. Probably all will admit that lines must be drawn somewhere. There comes a time, that is to say, when the boy may be left more and more to direct himself,—as in other matters, so in the subject-matter of his education. But for years the boy, in order to learn how to study and how to make right choice of what he will study, must be kept in prescribed lines. Infants cannot decide whether they will learn to read or not. Small boys cannot be left wholly to decide whether they will study grammar and arithmetic. Older boys and youths and young men, whatever they undertake in the education of themselves, find a great fund of previous experience and established custom hemming them in and restricting their perfectly free choice. The average college freshman ought not to desire, and he is not capable of exercising, such choice in so grave a problem as that of determining all the further subject-matter of his education.
In the matter of assuming full political rights and privileges the State requires the youth to have reached the age of twenty-one. I do not suppose that there is anything magical about this particular number. Some young men would be ready for suffrage earlier; some men are never really ready for it. But a line must be drawn somewhere. And certainly, after the youth has spent two years in the drill of college life, he is much better fitted than when he enters for exercising his choices in respect to the rest of his education; but then only in a limited way. Professor Palmer, however, thinks it almost self-evident that when the boy leaves home, at about eighteen years of age, is the best time for him to hegin to say what he will study; and that, all at once, and from that time onward, he should have the entire say. It seems to me that the very fact of the new surroundings with which college life begins is an argument the other way. After the youth has developed awhile in his new surroundings, has adjusted himself to them, has learned from experience in them how matters pertaining to study go, and what the different courses opening before him are, then, and not till then, should he be summoned to the grave task of deciding. It is better, too, that he should be introduced gradually to the responsibilities of deciding. A headlong plunge into freedom is not a real good. Moreover, I am one of those who still believe that an educated man should be trained to some good degree in each of the four great branches of human knowledge,—in language, including literature; in mathematics and physical science; in the history of his race; in the knowledge of the human mind in its relations to all else. It is, then, precisely because I do not believe that the New Education draws its lines in the right place that I am opposed to what I regard as its extreme measures and not well-guarded ideas. In an enlarged use of option for the later years of college life I do believe; but my belief in the elective system at all in the American college is not so strong as my distrust of the lengths to which it is being carried by the so-called New Education.
There is one argument of Professor Palmer which is so much a matter of taste and impression, and so little a matter of statistics and logic, that it is not open to discussion. I refer to his conviction that a better type of manliness is developed at Harvard in the students than is to be found in other colleges that have less completely adopted the principles of the New Education. In behalf of my own pupils, and on the ground of careful observations, I will simply say,—I do not believe that any manlier men than those at Yale are to be found in any college in the country.
Upon the subject of cultured manliness in the undergraduate student, I find myself holding the same ideal as that presented by Professor Palmer, but differing from him considerably in my judgment as to the best way of realizing it. It seems to me that he has left the great ethical law of habit, and the immense value of the pressure of immediate necessity, too much out of the account. We want, indeed, to train the young to make right choices, spontaneously, and with a generous love of duty. But none of us live under the sole influence of high ideals set at some remote distance from us. Day by day we choose to do our tasks because the hour for them has come, and the immediate pressure of the environment is upon us. Shall the physician go to his office when the hour comes? His patients are there in waiting. He is expected daily at the appointed hours,—and not merely eighty-four per cent. of these hours. Shall the clerk be at the store, or the book-keeper at his desk, when the hour for beginning business has arrived? He must be there: not because he will suffer physical torture if absent; nor yet because he will finally discover that much absence for many years has not, on the whole, been for his best interests. He must be there because he is living under a system which makes it for his immediate interest to be there; and, indeed, has been so trained under such a system that he scarcely contemplates the possibility of not being there. Under a system of education which kindly but firmly invites men to choose right, in view of consequences that fit close to their daily and hourly lives, the best character will be trained. It is most like the divine system under which we live as bound together by associated action.
The ground of Professor Palmer's argument from experience has now been pretty well traversed. I am quite content to leave the facts and impressions on both sides to be weighed by all who may be interested in such discussion. In closing I shall express—in the name of the great majority of those engaged in the practical work of education in this country—some of the fears felt as to the ultimate results of the New Education. These fears are not bugbears, incontinently and obstinately opposed to the fair spirit of progress; they are honest and strong fears.
We are afraid that the New Education (meaning by this the method in use at Harvard) will increase the tendency to self-indulgence and shallowness, which is already great enough in American student life. A smattering of many knowledges, hastily and superficially got, is the temptation of our modern education. The chief remedy must be in a selection of certain topics to be pursued with large persistence and thoroughness by all those who choose to associate themselves for purposes of common study. H the average American boy, on entering college, had had a discipline, and had made acquisitions in a few lines of study, at all equalling the results reached by the German gymnasium, he might more safely be left to choose for himself. One's eyes must be already well opened to hop about, fetter free, from twig to twig, upon the tree of knowledge. But our freshman has had no such mental discipline; he has made no such acquisitions. The graduate of a German gymnasium knows, indeed, more of some subjects than the majority of the professors of the same subjects in not a few of our so-called colleges. Two years more of continued study in prescribed lines is certainly little enough. [It will be noticed that this statement is quite independent of any opinion as to what should be taught in fitting-school and early college years; it implies only that something should be secured as thoroughly taught.]
We are afraid of the effect of the New Education upon the academies and fitting-schools of the country. Slowly but steadily the quality of the work done in the preparation of boys for college has been improving. The colleges have continually made increased demands upon the preparatory schools; these schools have been continually responding better and better to the demands made upon them. But now they are to be called upon for a bewildering variety of "courses." How shall they meet the demands made upon them by the many ways amongst which a boy may make his choice to enter the college doors as thrown open by the New Education? What interest will boys continue to take in the mathematics and ancient classics of the fitting-school when these pursuits are required simply to get into college through one of these many doors, and are then liable to be abandoned as soon as the goal of free election has been attained?
We are afraid of the effect of the unrestricted elective system upon the higher education of the country. The standard of such education has constantly been rising for many years. The old methods were, indeed, faulty in many particulars,—in some inherently so, in more as a matter of accidental and temporary application. Yet, after all, they gave something that had a definite and tangible value. The new methods, in themselves considered, are better. The new learning and science are, of course, infinitely richer and broader than the old. In order to introduce them to the college undergraduate, however, is it necessary to take everything as respects the subject-matter of his education out of the direct control of the older and wiser party in the transaction, and commit it to the choice of the younger and more inexperienced? If this is to be, how will it not affect, almost disastrously for a time, the interests of the higher education? There are, to be sure, many ways of being educated: there are already many schools giving different quantities and kinds of knowledges and powers of action. Hitherto all ways and schools have invited the choices of the men who have attended them only in a general way. They have said, virtually, If you choose me, you choose a certain kind and amount of discipline in knowing and doing, and you must abide by your choice. We know how, as respects both matter and manner, to reach the end better than do you; we will, in the main, choose the path for you. But what of connected, steady discipline in certain lines will a higher education come to represent in this country if the so-called "new" method of giving into the hands of the pupil all choice of subject, from one short period of education to the next, is to prevail?
Finally, we are afraid of the effect of the New Education upon the character of youth. We are still afraid of the very issues in which Professor Palmer finds his arguments for the benefits of the system he approves. It is not enough to show that some improvement in various particulars has taken place in student character and student life at Harvard since this system was most completely put in place there. I think I have shown that in every respect, except the one of securing $175,000 instead of $250,000 a year, and of making a smaller percentage of annual gain in numbers, the results of the system still in vogue at Yale are equal, or superior, to those at Harvard. The argument, from an experience of one or two years in a single institution, does not quiet the fears which are grounded in old-time convictions and common institutional customs that have their roots in many centuries. We need much more light, both from reason and from observation, before we can see our way clearly to prefer the so-called "New Education" to one which is, in our judgment, wiser, although both new and old.