2o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



made by the authorities; editors of college publications rebel against 

 rebukes or censures for indecent or scurrilous attacks upon officers of 

 the institution and are ready to denounce them as interference with 

 the liberty of the press. It would appear as if the college faculty, in 

 the opinion of too many students, is an inconvenient and somewhat 

 disagreeable, but unfortunately necessary, appendage to the student 

 body. 



Clearly enough, the change has not been altogether for good. The 

 old adage says 'He who would command must first learn to obey.' It 

 is but the expression of human experience. That American lads are 

 sorely in need of such training is only too evident; but they can not 

 get it in secondary schools dependent upon tuition fees for their sup- 

 port. Such training means more — training to think, to reason. Lads 

 too often fail to receive this training in secondary schools, as any in- 

 structor who has to deal with freshmen can testify. In any event, the 

 secondary schools of to-day can not give this training in its complete- 

 ness, for they have not become fully adjusted to the suddenly expanded 

 requirements for admission to college or scientific or technical school, 

 and in their present state of development are little better than cram- 

 ming houses to fit pupils to answer odds and ends of questions in 

 papers for entrance examinations. Loose thinking and restlessness 

 under constraint characterize the American student in the lower 

 classes at college; lack of home training may be responsible in part 

 for the latter characteristic; inferior teaching in secondary schools 

 is largely responsible for the former. 



The corrective for the evils which beset our colleges is not transfer 

 of the training to secondary schools, which can not give it, but a return 

 to the college organization of twenty-five years ago, to the college with 

 {1 course four years long, mainly compulsory, with little election prior 

 to the senior year — not to the old course in its narrowness but to the 

 old course with its compulsion and with increased severity. Four years 

 are none too long for the necessary moral and intellectual discipline, 

 and the graduate, who afterward enters law or medicine, will still be 

 so young as to make clients and patients hesitate to employ him. If 

 the cry for earlier admission to professional schools must be heeded, 

 lessen the entrance requirements for the college — though even that 

 might fail : the increasing solicitude of parents for the health of their 

 sons and the schoolmasters' canny dread of pushing pupils too rapidly 

 are familiar phenomena. The course should be a broad one, embracing 

 linguistics, philosophy, mathematics and natural science, each term 

 being used in its wide sense, and each group in proper proportion to 

 its importance to-day. Every branch should be so taught as to give 

 mental training and at the same time knowledge, that at graduation 

 the faithful student may have laid the foundation for becoming a 'well 



