their unfolding. Those who favor and those who oppose classical study as a necessary part of education can justify their position by an appeal to one or the other of the ideas about to be stated. All questions as to disciplinary benefit, as to method of instruction, as to amount of net result, are wholly out of date. The changes could be rung forever on these matters, with no gain and much loss of temper. Most of the claims put forth by those who advocate the superiority of classical studies are either nonsense or beside the mark. Classical studies have advantages—that is to say, excellences—peculiar to themselves. So have the sciences. These different advantages will appeal to different minds, and no power can prevent the appeal. Let each party so teach as to bring out the advantages best, in fullest manner. If the history of education shows anything, it shows that the place for all efficient reform in education is in the manner of teaching rather than the matter. Devising something new to be learned will never save the soul; devising, or rather finding, the right way to impart knowledge will save, and this with a growing salvation.
If the professors of Latin and Greek recognize that they are not solely or chiefly professors of philology—but rather that they are appointed to acquaint the scholar with literatures transcendent in their beauty of form, their wealth of imagery, and their depth of thought—if the professors of Latin and Greek recognize the true method of doing this great work, classical study will never be neglected. All this is equally true of the instructors in physical science. The distinction between a fact seen in the dry light of its naked isolation and the same fact as part of an organic and amazing whole is the distinction between life and death in the teaching of science.
To employ a certain kind of teaching (which is in no sense teaching), and to expect educational reform by confining a boy to physical science or to classics, is a colossal mistake. To pay the lowest wages in the primary grades of our schools, where the best teaching is imperatively needed, is an equally impressive blunder. To engage a professor for what he knows, for the number of books he has written, for the amount of original work he has done, is—to do a grand thing for the professor, but by no means necessarily a grand thing for the pupil. Most of the young men and women in American colleges need to be taught. Is this to decry research or the establishment of all means for discovery? Rather is it to discriminate between the work of teaching and the work of investigation. Is a man called to teach, is he employed to teach, is he paid to teach—let him, then, teach, i.e., let him spend himself in the work of education. Were every teacher, nay, were the majority of teachers, to see in the pupil the pupil, there would be a reforming of education such as has not yet been experienced.
We close this paper by such a brief statement of the opposing ideas previously mentioned as may best serve to show their reality.
