THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 173 



to read, write and calculate; primary education should be chiefly 

 for the formation of motor habits; a child's head will not hold 

 more miscellaneous facts than can be injected in a year or two; he can 

 learn nearly as much of his present scholastic studies in two hours a 

 day as in eight. If the required school attendance for each child were 

 reduced to one half or one third, then without additional expense the 

 fewer buildings and smaller equipment might be doubled or tripled 

 in value, and the salaries of teachers might be doubled or tripled. The 

 best trained teachers, more men than women, should be in charge of 

 the younger children. If society must develop a class similar to the 

 neuter insects, it should not have charge of the education of children. 

 The boy should stay in the high school until he is eighteen and then go 

 to the university, or he should enter the college at sixteen and pass 

 forward to the university in two years. The man should begin to take 

 part in the real work of the world at twenty-one, but he should never 

 regard his education as complete, and should for many years, if not 

 always, continue to spend some time in work at the university. 



I believe in the practice system from start to finish. Let the child 

 learn the best that the home can teach, let the younger child learn from 

 the older, let the novice learn by helping the master. Each child should 

 have as wide interests and as generous sympathies as may be; he should 

 learn to do some useful work ; he should strive to become an originator 

 and a leader. Never in our educational system should these three 

 chief ends of education be separated, least of all in the university. 



The word 'culture' has for me acquired an objectionable connota- 

 tion — it calls up a picture of manure applied to turnips or of microbes 

 growing fat by feeding on gelatine. Boys of twenty-one, chiefly inter- 

 ested in quasi-professional athletic competitions and social organiza- 

 tions, incidentally nibbling at the academic flowers and fruits from 

 which the fences have been removed, supported by their parents at 

 the cost of $1,000 a head, are a variety of prize animal that can not 

 become universal. The elective system, in so far as it means that a 

 Procrustean course of study shall not be imposed mechanically on all 

 students, but that his work shall be selected by the boy with the advice 

 of judicious councilors, is one of our great educational advances. But 

 the boy should have some definite aim from the outset; he should 

 usually prepare himself to follow the trade or profession of his father, 

 always aiming to reach a higher plane, while at the same time he 

 and his teachers should always be on the watch for any special aptitude 

 or sign of genius. The boy's studies should be related to his life's 

 work, and the relation should be evident to him. Then apart from 

 his main interest, he should have one or two recreations or avocations, 

 as a sport or game, some branch of science or one of the fine arts. Here 

 too he should be an expert, only an amateur in so far as he is led by 



