THE CASE OF HARVARD COLLEGE 607 



and professional work. Professor Tufts discussed the importance of a 

 " reconstruction of the college ideal of liberal culture ... by a greater 

 introduction of the vocational element and spirit into college work." 

 Professor Koyce said: 



Let us seek to assimilate college work more rather than less to that sort 

 and grade of professional work which calls out a young man's energies just 

 because he feels that in such work something is at stake that is, for him, per- 

 sonally momentous. . . . Let us beware of those theorists who, in the name of 

 what they call the American college, want to sunder afresh what the whole 

 course of our modern American development has wisely tended to join, namely, 

 teaching and investigation, the more technical training and the more general 

 cultivation of our youth, as well as the graduate and the undergraduate types 

 of study. I should abhor the name college if this mere name ever led us into 

 such a backward course as some are now advocating:. 



e' 



Our ideas of culture are inherited, primitive and conventional. 

 There is a hierarchy of those who wear celluloid collars, those with 

 linen collars and those with non-detachable collars. Each class looks 

 down on that below it; but scarcely considers what the wearing of a 

 collar symbolizes. He carries a non-detachable collar who believes that 

 American college students must be forced " to study a little of every- 

 thing, for if not there is no certainty that they will be broadly culti- 

 vated." There are various kinds of culture nowadays — microbes 

 propagating in gelatine, turnips with twenty tons of manure to the 

 acre, and boys at Harvard studying a little of everything. 



As a matter of fact, boys at Harvard may be compelled to take all 

 sorts of courses and even to be coached for examinations on them, but 

 they do not of necessity study at all. They react normally to the futil- 

 ity of the scheme. There are many kinds of boys in a college commun- 

 ity — grinds and sports, scholars and entrepreneurs. One difficulty is 

 that they divide themselves into social cliques when they ought to mix, 

 and are mixed in the courses when they ought to be grouped with 

 reference to their abilities, interests and future work. 



The years from eighteen to twenty-five are precious beyond all 

 measure. A boy of eighteen is the rawest of material; within seven 

 years the pig-iron must become steel and the blade must get its finest 

 edge or it will never cut deep. But we bookmen must remember that 

 words and books and scholarship are not the only things in the world. 

 The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it is feeble beside the 

 workman's tool. An Achilles who has no Homer is not therefore less 

 great. We who talk and write have undue opportunity to exploit our 

 own trade. If we expect others to respect our scholarship, we should 

 in turn honor their performances. The fundamental fault of our 

 whole educational system is that we try to train to superficial scholar- 

 ship and conventional culture those who should be learning to do their 

 share of the world's work. 



