294 TH^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



term had expired, elaborate reports were called for from the leading 

 instructors in all the universities, of their judgment as to the proved 

 capacity and success of the students who had attended upon their 

 classes, from each of the two preparatory institutions with their sepa- 

 rate curricula. With but few exceptions the reports were decidedly 

 in favor of the classical curriculum as giving a better training even 

 to the students of the mathematical and physical sciences." 



We wish to call attention here to the fact that President Por- 

 ter's first sentence, though evidently without any intention on his part, 

 is misleading. He says that "the question of the superiority of a 

 classical to a modern training has of late been subjected to a prac- 

 tical trial." Not at all ; but simply the question of the relative supe- 

 riority of the graduates of the German gymnasia and real schools, 

 as they exist to-day in Germany, as indeed President Porter himself 

 states in the next to the last sentence quoted above. This last is a 

 very different question, indeed, from the former. The one is, so to 

 speak, concrete ; the other, abstract. The professors were not asked 

 for their opinions as to whether a classical is better than a modern 

 training, but is the gymnasiast, as you know him from the existing 

 schools, better fitted for your work than the real scholar who during 

 the last eight years has attended the university ? 



If it should appear upon examination that the curricula of the 

 real schools are not what is demanded by the most thoughtful " mod- 

 ernists," that the teachers are not, as a class, equal to those in the 

 gymnasia, that the pupils are, as a whole, inferior in natural ability, 

 that the real schools are not fostered by the Government to the same 

 extent as the classical schools, it will be evident to every one that the 

 significance of the Berlin report for the real question at issue — viz., 

 classics at their best vs. modern subjects at their best on an equal foot- 

 ing in every respect — ^becomes very slight. 



As appears from what we have said above, President Porter is 

 mistaken when he says that the graduates of the real schools were ad- 

 mitted to all the privileges of the university. They were only admit- 

 ted to certain branches in one faculty, viz., the philosophical faculty. 

 They were not, however, admitted for a definite number of years, as 

 President Porter states, but for an indefinite period. The ministerial 

 regulation admitting them says nothing whatever of any number of 

 years for which it is valid. It holds good until supplanted by one 

 prohibiting the admission of real-school students, and there is no sign 

 that such a regulation will ever be made. 



To begin with, then, all this quoting of the Berlin and similar 

 reports in favor of retaining Greek as a required study in our liberal 

 curricula is aside from the point, since that report was made on a very 

 different subject. The attempt to apply conclusions on concrete ques- 

 tions in one country to concrete questions in another is at all times a 

 misleading and often a dangerous procedure. 



