138 THE COLLEGE 



Why should the college course be shortened? Because in France 

 and Germany a boy completes his course in the lycee or gymnasium 

 at twenty years of age, and enters upon his professional course at the 

 university without anything that remotely resembles our college 

 course. But is this a reason? How do we know that the German or 

 French boy is better off without a college course? After sitting side 

 by side with the German gymnasium graduate in Leipzig for three 

 years and hearing him blunder through his pro-seminar recitations, 

 and after listening in the Paris International Congress of 1900 to 

 prolonged discussions of the limitations of the lycee graduate and the 

 misfortune of his choosing a career with only the school-boy's outlook 

 given by the lycee course, -- discussions in which he was incessantly 

 compared by Frenchmen themselves to the English and American col- 

 lege graduate, greatly to his disadvantage, I have come to the con- 

 clusion that he is much w r orse off. If it were possible, and if possible 

 desirable, to enforce over the whole United States two or three cast- 

 iron high-school courses, so difficult and rigid that private schools 

 would be practically annihilated by the impossibility of reaching their 

 standard, and to require the completion of one of these courses not 

 only for admission to all the colleges, but also to all the law, medical, 

 and theological schools, in the United States; and above all to every 

 lucrative and distinguished position, whether civil or military, in the 

 gift of the general or state governments, including, of course, the 

 position of teacher in these same high schools, and in the primary 

 schools as well; and if, furthermore, completion of six out of the nine 

 years in these high schools were made the condition of escaping one 

 year's hated service as a common soldier in the army, and the 

 escaping of such service, furthermore, were made, as in Germany, a 

 primary social necessity for gentlemen - - if all this were possible, 

 perhaps our American boys too would be able to learn as much by 

 twenty years of age as German or French boys; and perhaps such 

 tremendous financial and social bribes would buy the silence and 

 cooperation of American parents in the German and French deliberate 

 and unwavering sacrifice of youthful joy and sports before the Moloch 

 of future success. Even if all these impossible conditions were 

 to come into existence in the United States, it is at least an open 

 question whether we should not have lost in education far more than 

 we should have gained. In all comparisons between German and 

 American higher education it ought never to be forgotten that the 

 German and French universities do not profess to teach systematically 

 and to examine the ordinary college student who is preparing himself 

 for the life of affairs. They deal primarily with professional students, 

 whereas the reverse is coming to be true in the United States. But 

 it is unprofitable to contrast one country with another when educa- 

 tional conditions are so radically different. 



