specialized in history and political science preparatory to the study of law. Only 4.5 per cent, seemed to show a lack of proper concentration of energy, and of these one sixth received the A.B. magna cum laude. But circumstances alter cases. We are now told that more than half the students concentrate too much or too little. It is said that only one seventh of the students graduating from the law school cum laude concentrated too little in college, whereas the medical students did not concentrate nearly so much. It is not likely that medical students are inclined to specialize less than law students. The fact is that Harvard College provides the courses in English, history and political science needed by students of law and does not provide the courses in anatomy, physiology and pathology needed by students of medicine.[1] Instead of requiring students preparing for the medical school to take courses which they do not want, the college should offer the courses which they need.
The free elective system may be a partial failure; but it is doubtful whether, apart from the professional school, a better plan has been devised. The group system is better in so far as it is a professional school within the college; it is no better as a factory for the manufacture of cultivated gentlemen. Sequences and combinations of studies in the college should be planned which give adequate preparation for different kinds of work in life, not only for the orthodox and semi-orthodox professions, but also for business and affairs, and for such special performances as those of the Sanskrit scholar, the psychological expert or the economic entomologist. The courses should be planned by those engaged in these callings, rather than by a college faculty, and they should be elected by the student after proper counsel, rather than forced upon him.
The boy of eighteen or nineteen either should know what he is going to do in life and give at least part of his time to direct preparation, or he should have a working hypothesis. The professions differ in their demands. Medicine and engineering require manual dexterity and much special information; they should be begun in good season. Law and theology are less exacting of special training; a medical or engineering course would not be a bad preparation for the bar or the church, but the converse is not true. A lawyer who becomes a university president may not unnaturally fancy that the preparation suited to a lawyer would also be fit for the physician or engineer. But when he says:
- ↑ President Lowell in reply said that the study of Latin is the best preparation for a scientific career, but that the proper preparation for the profession of law is learning to reason. If the lawyer can be taught to reason, there is certainly a valid argument for that much compulsion in college.
