EDITORS TABLE. 



623 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



COERCION I2T EDUCATION. 



THE question of collegiate reform has 

 again broken out in public dis- 

 cussion. Dr. McCosh has, written a 

 letter to the Evening Post, protesting 

 against certain contemplated changes 

 in the management of the students in 

 Harvard University. It is proposed to 

 abolish the compulsory recitations, to 

 allow the students greater freedom, 

 but to hold them rigorously to the final 

 examinations a proceeding which 

 Dr. McCosh thinks is not only in itself 

 mistaken, but, by its adoption in so 

 influential an institution as Harvard, 

 would exert an injurious influence on 

 other colleges of the country. The im- 

 mediate question is that of college dis- 

 cipline. While there is a great stir in 

 behalf of general compulsory educa- 

 tion, Harvard proposes to relax its co- 

 ercive practices. President Elliot, in 

 his report to the Board of Overseers, 

 suggests that the time has come for 

 allowing more liberty to students, and, 

 as their average age of admission to his 

 institution is now above eighteen years, 

 he thinks that the school-boy tactics 

 might be dispensed with, and the stu- 

 dents be treated more as responsible 

 men, preparing for the work of life. 

 Dr. McCosh holds, on the contrary, that 

 the college is a place for discipline, 

 which is to be acquired by the enforce- 

 ment of external rules and the close su- 

 pervision of the students by tutors, and 

 the method of enforced recitations. 



President Elliot assumes that the 

 policy of European universities is more 

 free than that of American colleges, 

 and in this respect is worthy of our 

 imitation. Dr. McCosh denies this. 

 He says: " In all the good colleges of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, the ten- 

 dency of late years has been toward a 

 weekly or daily supervision of studies. 



In Oxford and Cambridge, which have 

 produced such ripe scholarship and 

 high culture, the teaching is conducted, 

 not by loose lectures of professors, but 

 by numerous erudite tutors, who may 

 not have more than half a dozen pu- 

 pils present at a time, possibly not 

 more than one, but who rigidly insist 

 that the pupils be present and do their 

 work." In regard to the German sys- 

 tem, Dr. McCosh states that the G-ym- 

 nasien and Realsclmle the prepara- 

 tory schools take charge of the pupils 

 from the age of ten or twelve to eigh- 

 teen, and carry their scholarship as far 

 as the freshmen or sophomore classes 

 in our American colleges. And he 

 says that at these institutions " attend- 

 ance is rigidly required, and the in- 

 struction is of a thoroughly drill-char- 

 acter. Every one ought to know that 

 the foundation of German scholarship 

 is laid, not in the universities, but in 

 the Gymnasien. In the universities ot 

 Germany there is much to commend. 

 Berlin, with its two hundred teachers, 

 can furnish high instruction in every 

 department of human learning. It is 

 the very place for an American youth 

 to go to, when, having taken his de- 

 gree at home, he wishes to perfect 

 himself in some special department ot 

 scholarship. At all the universities 

 a few studious youth work with great 

 assiduity and success. But a very 

 large portion are not studious, and 

 take a deeper interest in beer-drinking, 

 Burschen, songs, and sword-duels, than 

 in careful reading." 



The question here raised is not to 

 be settled by European precedents, be- 

 cause first, as we see, the doctors disa- 

 gree as to the facts; and, second, be- 

 cause it is a radical question affecting 

 our whole educational system, and can 

 only be settled by an appeal to first 



