E VOL UTIOiV OF THE COLLE GE CURRICUL UAL 259 



include all subjects which experience shows to 

 belong to the necessary groundwork of higher 

 education. I need not go over a list of these sub- 

 jects. The future will make its own list, and the 

 efforts of the colleges will not change it. 



But here, it seems to me, is one of the chief diffi- 

 culties in the way of our colleges, east and west. 

 No school in Indiana seems content to be a pre- 

 paratory school. Each one aims to give a general 

 education ; to be a university in a small way, a 

 "university for the poor," — a poor university. In 

 the words of Lowell : " The public schools teach 

 too little or too much : too little, if education is 

 to go no further; too many things, if what is 

 taught is to be taught thoroughly. And the more 

 they seem to teach, the less likely is education to 

 go further; for it is one of the weaknesses of 

 democracy to be satisfied with the second best 

 if it appear to answer the purpose tolerably well, 

 and to be cheaper, as it never is in the long run." 

 In other words, the high schools, too, are in the 

 patchwork era, and popular feeling tends to keep 

 them there, to satisfy by a show of education the 

 vast majority of their students who are likely to 

 go no farther. The growth in educational systems 

 is from above downwards, and the right kind of 

 preparatory schools w^ill arise only in response to 

 the demands of real universities. In historical 

 sequence Oxford must precede Rugby, and the 

 German university must come before the gymna- 

 sium. The American high school will not reach, 

 I think, the standard of the German gymnasium, 

 which gives training not inferior in amount or kind 



