The Days of a Man 



1887 



The dregs patchwork concessions to opportunism l Greek (and 

 ^ ateT Latin), as I have previously explained, was 

 replaced by odds and ends of Science, History, and 

 Modern Languages, the resulting makeshifts, rightly 

 regarded as inferior, being designated as "Science," 

 "Philosophy," and "Literature." The degree of 

 B.S., as then awarded for such superficial courses, I 

 defined as "Bachelor of Surfaces." 



I further tried to show that higher education in 

 America must recover its dignity, and that not 

 through the crowding out of the Classics with in- 

 vertebrate fragments of other forms of discipline, 

 but by a well-considered adaptation of study to the 

 needs of the individual. This could be attained 

 only through the development and coordination of 

 a rational elective system by which each student 

 chooses his own line of work and is stimulated to 

 pursue it to a degree of mastery. My argument, I 

 repeat, was not that Greek or Latin should be 

 abolished or neglected, but that ample provision 

 should be made for science and modern "humanities." 

 In developing this thesis I advocated the ultimate 



suggestion abandonment of the Bachelor's degree, and the 

 recognition of advanced professional degrees only 

 in research along various lines, as well as in Medicine, 

 Law, and Engineering. As a beginning, I suggested 

 that all Bachelor's degrees should be merged into 

 one, that of Bachelor of Arts. This step had already 

 been taken at Johns Hopkins and at Harvard, a 

 policy afterward followed by numerous other leading 



1 The theory of the system was feelingly expressed by the learned Dr. 

 Noah Porter, then president of Yale: 



"We couldn't provide for special talents and we had to give something the 

 general run of the boys could chew on; it didn't matter much what." 



Quoted by Henry Holt, Unpartizan Review, July, 1920 



c 324 3 



A radical 



