Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/212

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208
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

made by the authorities; editors of college publications rebel against rebukes or censures for indecent or scurrilous attacks upon officers of the institution and are ready to denounce them as interference with the liberty of the press. It would appear as if the college faculty, in the opinion of too many students, is an inconvenient and somewhat disagreeable, but unfortunately necessary, appendage to the student body.

Clearly enough, the change has not been altogether for good. The old adage says 'He who would command must first learn to obey.' It is but the expression of human experience. That American lads are sorely in need of such training is only too evident; but they can not get it in secondary schools dependent upon tuition fees for their support. Such training means more—training to think, to reason. Lads too often fail to receive this training in secondary schools, as any instructor who has to deal with freshmen can testify. In any event, the secondary schools of to-day can not give this training in its completeness, for they have not become fully adjusted to the suddenly expanded requirements for admission to college or scientific or technical school, and in their present state of development are little better than cramming houses to fit pupils to answer odds and ends of questions in papers for entrance examinations. Loose thinking and restlessness under constraint characterize the American student in the lower classes at college; lack of home training may be responsible in part for the latter characteristic; inferior teaching in secondary schools is largely responsible for the former.

The corrective for the evils which beset our colleges is not transfer of the training to secondary schools, which can not give it, but a return to the college organization of twenty-five years ago, to the college with {1 course four years long, mainly compulsory, with little election prior to the senior year—not to the old course in its narrowness but to the old course with its compulsion and with increased severity. Four years are none too long for the necessary moral and intellectual discipline, and the graduate, who afterward enters law or medicine, will still be so young as to make clients and patients hesitate to employ him. If the cry for earlier admission to professional schools must be heeded, lessen the entrance requirements for the college—though even that might fail: the increasing solicitude of parents for the health of their sons and the schoolmasters' canny dread of pushing pupils too rapidly are familiar phenomena. The course should be a broad one, embracing linguistics, philosophy, mathematics and natural science, each term being used in its wide sense, and each group in proper proportion to its importance to-day. Every branch should be so taught as to give mental training and at the same time knowledge, that at graduation the faithful student may have laid the foundation for becoming a 'well