REFORM IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 39 



improved condition of the teachers of the elementary schools, 

 and of the teachers of onr colleges and higher institutions of 

 learning. Of this you may well be satisfied, that you cannot 

 have an agricultural institution well organized without securing 

 from the public schools the pupils that will profit by it. Do 

 that, and all will be well. 



Leander Wetherell, of Boston. I have been very much 

 interested in the remarks of the last speaker with regard to our 

 public schools. A gentleman inquired of me the other day, in 

 regard to these schools : " "What is their greatest defect, in your 

 judgment?" My reply was: "Too much book, and too little 

 things." I was very much pleased when Professor Agassiz made 

 that statement, because it so fully concurred with my own con- 

 victions ; and I as fully concurred in what he said afterwards ; 

 not that I have any objection to books, for I am too fond a lover 

 of books to cast any slander upon them ; they are our aids in every 

 way. But there is such a thing in our public schools as making 

 the children memorize books until they become mere machines, 

 to bear about in their memory what other men have thought 

 and written down, without seeing the relation or connection 

 between those books and the things which have given the authors 

 the elements out of which to make those books. I trust, there- 

 fore, as the professor says, that we shall see this reform, which 

 he says is so much needed in our public schools, inaugurated. 

 They need improvement, in every sense of the word, in the line 

 which the professor has indicated ; and therefore, Mr. Chairman, 

 I trust that the work will begin, as the professor has well said, 

 at the elementary institution of our educational system, for that 

 is the right place. 



I was glad, also, to hear the remarks made here by those 

 officially connected with this college, that opportunities are to 

 be given to young men, and older men, if they desire, to attend 

 the lectures at the institution, without going through a fixed 

 course, as in the case in most of our colleges. I believe there 

 are institutions already in operation that are as good as we can 

 make, as good as we can desire, for educating the mind. For 

 instance, in the department of mathematics, how could you do 

 better than to go to Cambridge ? And so I might go on and 

 speak of other departments. In that view, I was glad to hear 

 the president say what he did, to wit : that you may go to the 



