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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



need of the watershed, it is proposed 

 to develop at first only the Esopus 

 watershed by the construction of the 

 great Ashokan dam at Olive Bridge 

 and to carry the water to the present 

 Croton system, the aqueducts of which 

 are somewhat in excess of the Croton 

 supply in dry years. It is hoped that 

 this part of the undertaking may be 

 completed within three years. 



IRE AMHEEST IDEA 



The class of 1885 of Amherst Col- 

 lege at its twenty-fifth reunion a year 

 ago appointed a committee to present 

 to the trustees an address on the future 

 development of the college. It is an 

 interesting fact that the alumni of a 

 college should concern themselves with 

 scholarship rather than with athletics, 

 and the address is a document of such 

 considerable moment that it has at- 

 tracted wide attention. The committee 

 signing the report points out that the 

 conditions for a college such as Am- 

 herst have changed in the course of 

 the past twenty-five years. The great 

 universities, especially the state uni- 

 versities, take students from the high 

 school and graduate them prepared for 

 a technical career. A college such as 

 Amherst can not compete with these 

 institutions. According to the commit- 

 tee it ha.i or should have other objects. 

 It should demand a preparation not 

 within the tendencies of the high 

 schools, and give a course which post- 

 pones preparation for a profession. 

 Amherst should retain, or return to, a 

 liberal or classical education and con- 

 fine its work to this. The committee 

 makes to the trustees five definite 

 propositions : 



1. That the instruction given at Am- 

 herst College be a modified classical 

 course. 



2. That the degree of bachelor of 

 science be abolished. 



3. That the college adopt the delib- 

 erate policy of devoting all its means 

 to the indefinite increase of teachers' 

 salaries. 



4. That the number of students at- 

 tending the college be limited. 



5. That entrance be permitted only 

 by competitive examination. 



The committee does not make clear 

 just what a modified classical course 

 should be. They say that all would 

 agree that some knowledge of science 

 is part of a liberal education and that 

 no one would advocate the adoption of 

 the unchanged classical course of fifty 

 years ago. They also say that a class- 

 ical education is a training in civics, 

 the history of government, etc. The 

 difficulty is that if students are to be 

 thoroughly trained in Latin and Greek, 

 they must specialize quite as much as 

 students preparing for the professions. 

 Now that we have admirable technolog- 

 ical schools, it would apparently be 

 desirable to have schools that would 

 specialize to the same extent in the 

 languages, on the one hand, and in his- 

 tory and political science, on the other. 

 This is not because, as the committee 

 argues, technical education teaches de- 

 vices instead of principles, and is one 

 of the causes of the increased excita- 

 bility of American politics. This is 

 little short of nonsense. But it would 

 be desirable for one college to give a 

 thorough classical education for the 

 training of scholars in this direction 

 and as a basis for work in literature, 

 in law and in other professions. It is 

 an advantage for men to enter on their 

 professions with diverse training in 

 order that they may specialize in dif- 

 ferent directions. Such a college 

 should have a graduate department, 

 which the Amherst committee appar- 

 ently regards as superfluous, in order 

 to maintain the scholarship both of its 

 professors and of its students. 



This, however, is presumably not at 

 all what is wanted by the committee; 

 it would let Amherst College give a 

 liberal education on the lines, for ex- 

 ample, advocated by President Lowell, 

 teaching those things which a culti- 

 vated gentleman should know. If such 

 an education is desirable there is much 

 to be said for giving it at a small 

 college rather than in a great univer- 

 sity. If a college is limited to some 

 three hundred students, it is possible 

 for all the students to attend the same 

 courses, to know each other and all the 



