2o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



University methods of instruction have been introduced and laboratory 

 work is made an imjaortant feature, to the exclusion of information 

 courses, which should go toward making the student a well-informed 

 man. Even the high schools have been infected, and in one city, at 

 least, the lad of fourteen has the opportunity to elect a considerable 

 part of his studies. 



The whole system of groups or of wide election in the earlier years 

 is based upon an erroneous conception of the proper aim of college 

 work. No considerable proportion of American students are com- 

 petent to decide at the outset of the college career or even at the close 

 of the freshman year what studies they should pursue ; nor in the vast 

 majority of cases are the parents competent to decide the question. 

 One is told that the German student is but nineteen years old when he 

 enters the university, where all courses are open; and then is asked if 

 he is prepared to assert that the American boy is less capable than the 

 German boy. The question of capability or non-capability has noth- 

 ing to do with the matter. When American secondary schools attain 

 to the grade of the German gymnasium and American boys are com- 

 pelled to undergo severe preparatory training such as is given in the 

 gymnasium, they will be at least as competent to make a choice as are 

 the German boys. But that matter is neither here nor there in this 

 connection, for the training in our secondary schools is too frequently 

 such as to cause only pain and annoyance to college instructors. The 

 wliole system is wrong, in view of the imperfect preliminary drill 

 received by our students. No physical director would permit a hollow- 

 chested, slender-armed sophomore to confine himself to leg exercises, 

 merely because he has chosen book-canvassing as his life's work. Yet 

 such freedom is allowed in the vastly more important matter of mental 

 training; a sophomore who thinks he intends to become a clergyman is 

 permitted to confine his attention to classics and literature; another, 

 who finds mathematics distasteful and acquiring a vocabulary irksome, 

 is permitted to select a course omitting those subjects, because he 

 expects to be a lawyer; while another has the opportunity to select a 

 still narrower course because he has medicine in view. So men pass 

 through college, some to reach the ministry as 'leaders of thought' 

 and at the same time to be laughing stocks for the children of the 

 parish, because ignorant of the works of the God whom they preach; 

 others to become lawyers and to find themslves shut out from the most 

 important branches of practise, because ignorant of the fundamental 

 principles of science; others still to become physicians and to find 

 themselves handicapped in the race by inability to communicate their 

 thoughts in direct language ; while most of them enter life 's struggle 

 with a stock of ignorance utterly discreditable to a young man of the 

 twentieth century. The error throughout is due to forgetfulness of 

 the fact that the college is a training not a professional school. 



