64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



children taking elementary studies. One can only wish Godspeed to 

 any denominational board which endeavors to bring order out of such 

 chaos. 



The vicious conditions found in large universities exist in smaller 

 colleges, where they are fraught with more of danger. Students' year 

 books tell of football, baseball and other teams ; the athletic field is all- 

 important and the official announcements in some cases dwell on its 

 extent and attractiveness with greater gusto than is expended on de- 

 scription of the curriculum — possibly because a man prefers to write 

 the truth. In the small college as in the large physical culture is 

 acquired by proxies — the teams, which are supported under social 

 compulsion. In some, the wandering glee club is present and the 

 inter-collegiate contest is familiar throughout. Most of these " col- 

 leges " are coeducational and the number of male students is small, so 

 that the proportion affected injuriously by these advertising schemes 

 is much greater than in the larger colleges. The claim, so often 

 asserted in circulars and advertisements, that the country village is 

 free from vice, whereas that stalks openly in a city, is not in accord 

 with fact. The writer has been professor in both country and city 

 and he knows that there is little difference in this respect; but what 

 difference there may be is in favor of the city as the safer place for 

 the average boy. 



Yet the longing, so often expressed by old graduates whose sons 

 are now in college, has much to justify it. There is a wide-spread 

 conviction that the educational condition is lamentably bad. But the 

 longing is not for return to the old college with its lack of equipment; 

 it is for return to the definiteness of the old curriculum, for escape 

 from the aimlessness of the present curriculum. The university has 

 been engrafted upon the college, while the ambition of high-school 

 officials has diverted those schools from their true aim so that they 

 encroach upon the college. Between university and high school, the 

 college or mental gymnasium is threatened with extinction. 



The university method of broad selection or of specialization in 

 narrow groups is not for boys without stern intellectual drill. As 

 matters now stand, a lad, crammed to pass an entrance examination, 

 but untrained in the art of thinking, is thrown into university condi- 

 tions to choose his courses, though neither he nor, in most cases, his 

 parents are competent to determine the selection. The university and 

 the college should be differentiated and the old-time method should 

 be revived. In that, training was the main purpose; it was not, as 

 now, secondary to athletics or tertiary to increased numbers. This is 

 not to say that the narrow curriculum should be revived. That was 

 designed to meet the supposed needs of men looking forward to the 



