EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 25 I 



Ancient Classics and Mathematics has yet been 

 found, I shall not try to say ; but the aims of such 

 a course should be the same in kind as that of the 

 classical curriculum. It may perhaps be possible 

 to teach better things and in a better way than 

 was done in the classical schools ; but all attempts 

 at combining in a prescribed curriculum mental 

 discipline and a wide range of subjects must result 

 in failure, so far as training the mind is concerned. 

 You cannot teach everything to every student. 

 Either the college or the student must choose. 



Some of the weakest features of our college sys- 

 tem centre, it seems to me, about the conventional 

 term of four years, and the conventional Bachelor's 

 degree. Students are encouraged to work for the 

 degree rather than for culture ; all work of the stu- 

 dent is estimated by the bulk rather than by the 

 quality. In an ideal condition of things the stu- 

 dent's work ought not to be estimated at all. 

 Marks and terms are clumsy devices, more suitable 

 for measuring cord-wood than culture. The degree 

 is the official seal of completion set on something 

 which in the nature of things can never be com- 

 pleted. For the college is not a machine for filling 

 the student on the sausage-stuffer plan. It is, at 

 best, a place for self-culture. All culture is self- 

 culture, or it is no culture at all. Libraries, appa- 

 ratus, museums, teachers even, are useless to the 

 student, unless the student use them. Teachers 

 give inspiration and criticism; fellow-students do 

 the same ; but the road to wisdom is a solitary 

 road to be traversed in Indian file. 



We may lay on the Bachelor's degree at once 



