101 



luaiul (if the T'nited States of America. One of the features of this training is 

 the habit of obedience, which it inculcates. 1 submit to every one of you 

 gentlemen here that obedience to law and wholesome submission to salutary 

 restraint is one of the great desiderata in the education of the young men of 

 America. We are inclined to be somewhat lawless — we have the reputation of 

 being lawless. In looking over the penal statistics cf Great Britain, of the 

 I'nite<l States, Germany, and France, you will find that, unhappily, we are very 

 largely in the ascendant with the percentage of crimes, the percentage of murder, 

 the percentage of deeds of violence to which the habit of disobedience neces- 

 sarily leads, as compared with any other civilized countries of the world. But 

 we can make this military education in these several institutions auxiliary to 

 the improvement in this respect, and, it seems to me. it would be well worth 

 the expenditure of our time and worthy of our consideration and efforts. 



After some further discussion President A'an Hise's resolution was adopted in 

 modified foi'm, as already given (p. G3). 



What Degrees Should Be Given for the Completion of Undergraduate 

 Courses in Land-Grant Colleges? 



G. A. Ilarter, of Delaware, presented the following paper on this subject: 



The subject that has been assigned me by the programme committee to-day 

 gives me peculiar satisfaction in that I shall be able to present my personal 

 views instead of being required officially to announce a distasteful practice, 

 as I must do in college publications and at college functions. 



" What degree shall be given for completion of undergraduate work in 

 land-grant colleges?" has been asked by each of these institutions and has 

 brought forth a great variety of answers. When these colleges were first 

 organized there was no uniformity of conception among educators as to the 

 work that they were meant to perforin in the national educational economy. Pro- 

 vision was made in the law approved by President Lincoln, July 5, 1802, for 

 "the maintenance of at least one college in each State where the leading 

 objects shall be. without excluding other scientific and classical studies and 

 including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related 

 to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of 

 the States may, respectively, prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and 

 in-actical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and 

 professions in life." This was a time when the old forms of education were 

 found to be inadequate for the training of men for the several pursuits of 

 life, and new methods and new schools, wider in every sense than the old 

 ■classical college, were springing up. The old college, with its Greek, Latin, 

 mathematics, and modicum of science no longer filled the want of those who 

 sought an education to train them to do things in the affairs of the world. 



The college was no longer looked upon as the place where boys should go 

 to get preparation for entering the so-called "learned professions" only, but 

 young men began to find that they could be fitted for other occupations that 

 demanded as serious api)lication" of mental powers as were used by the 

 preacher, the lawyer, or the doctor. The Morrill law of 1862 was but an 

 expression of the "great popular dissatisfaction with the old-fashioned college 

 curriculum. It was an attempt to adjust the new education, as it was at that 

 time understood, to meet the new requirements of the sciences in the college 

 course to the training of the industrial classes. 



The historian of the future will point with pride to the sympathy of the 

 United States Government with this great popular demand f.>r widening and 

 deepening in every way the channels through which the various organized 

 agencies of educational processes have laid hold of American life. 



Soon after the passage of the land-scrip bill, colleges were organized in 

 every State, beneficiary of the provisions thus made for them. In some 

 States they were established in connection with colleges already in existence, 

 and new fife was put into these old institutions by the enlarged oi)portunities 

 made possible by widening their curricula and enriching their courses of study. 

 In other States a new kind of college was founded in order to teach agricul- 

 ture and the mechanic arts. In still other States the funds arising from the 

 iiational grant were either api)lied to the founding of a State university or 



