20 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE COLLEGE COUKSE. 



By Professor JOHN J. STEVENSON, 



NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. 



MUCH of the discussion respecting utility of college training is 

 irrelevant, for success in life proves nothing on one side or the 

 other. Every observing man knows that the qualities on which success 

 depends are inborn. College instructors can not impart brains or 

 common sense, can not convert the sluggard into a model of industry; 

 can do little toward removing the vanity which resents advice. They 

 "can make only an honest effort to cultivate the material provided by 

 nature. 



The discussion has been too nearly academic, and the parties have 

 been wary of coming down to definite issues. The opponent of college 

 training is cautious about too detailed attack upon that with which 

 he is not familiar; while teachers, though united in defense of their 

 work, are not wholly agreed either as to its final purpose or as to the 

 method of attaining it. The lack of consensus respecting the mean- 

 ing of the term education, whether preparatory or collegiate, is a 

 weakness which opponents have been quick to see and to attack. The 

 purpose in mental training should be as definite as is that in physical 

 training. The latter is a new branch of educational work and the 

 instructors, fettered by no traditions, aim to make the man physically 

 good all around, without any reference whatever to his future calling. 

 In mental training there seems to be no longer any such clear-cut pur- 

 pose. All agree, of course, in the abstract proposition that the aim is 

 to make the man useful — but, for what? 



The medieval theory of education looked to the utilization of the 

 individual for himself. Education being for the privileged few, to fit 

 men for the proper enjoyment of leisure, for the Latin priesthood or 

 to expound Roman law, the relations and the duties of the few to the 

 many were ignored. There resulted a narrow curriculum with close 

 attention to detail, which gave accuracy, certainly very wonderful, but, 

 like that of the microscope, in a very limited field. The modern 

 theory, developing slowly after men were emancipated from the thral- 

 dom of the church, more rapidly after the study of nature by observa- 

 tion was born again, regarded the individual not as the whole, but as 

 part of the whole, recognizing the basal principle that 'No man liveth 

 unto himself.' It demanded that man be so trained as to be of the 



