22 EDUCATION 



Less definitely perhaps, but still quite clearly, we see the same 

 change of character in our colleges and secondary schools. In the 

 place of a common course of study adapted to meet real or supposed 

 public needs, we have witnessed the gradual development of elective 

 courses intended to meet individual wishes at the moment or in- 

 dividual necessities for the future. We no longer lay our emphasis 

 on developing that general attitude of mind toward intellectual 

 questions which made the gentlemen or the scholars of the past. 

 We are concerned rather with developing many kinds of education 

 to suit the needs of many types of intellect and calling. The old- 

 fashioned idea of scholarship as an end of secondary education has 

 given place to the modern idea of science. Where the old-fashioned 

 course made masters of arts, the modern course looks upon doctors 

 of philosophy as its bright consummate flowers. We try to educate 

 our college students as intellectual producers and not as intellectual 

 consumers. I hold no brief for the old system. I shall not under- 

 take to consider how far the great and unquestioned gain in private 

 efficiency which has attended this change is offset by any loss in 

 public advantage. It is sufficient to point out the difference of point 

 of view which the change connotes, a difference which has mani- 

 fested itself not in America alone, but in England and France and 

 Germany and in every country where the old traditions of university 

 and college life are being modified under the influence of modern 

 theory and practice. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century a boy's course of study 

 in the high school or the college was not determined by his individual 

 aptitudes; it was determined almost entirely by his social standing 

 and social aspirations. If he belonged to the trading class, he re- 

 ceived one sort of education; if he belonged to the military class, he 

 received another sort; if he belonged to the professional class, he 

 received a third sort. The collegiate education one hundred years 

 ago was based chiefly upon the supposed needs of this professional 

 class. Whether it was obtained in the Lycee of France or the gymna- 

 sium of Germany, the public school of England, or the college of 

 America, it gave the student a large amount of training in Latin and 

 Greek, a somewhat smaller amount of training in mathematics and 

 moral science, and practically no training at all in modern languages 

 or natural and physical science. Save for the fact that it involved 

 a good deal of hard work and enabled the teacher to know whether the 

 pupil was really doing his work or not, this course had little practical 

 bearing on the needs of the individual. It served rather as an in- 

 itiation into the learned society of which that individual was to be 

 a member. It stamped the professional man, or the gentleman who 

 expected to associate with professional men, as a scholar; as one 

 who had gone through those distinctive rites which allowed a man 



