304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



equipped in regard to teachers and apparatus as an ordinary gymna- 

 sium, and with a simplified course of study, could give a liberal train- 

 ing equal to that afforded by the gymnasium, I should reply, I do not 

 know, as the experiment has never been tried ; but I am inclined to 

 think it could." 



The most advanced thinkers on pedagogics are coming to agree 

 that the subject taught has much less to do with its value as a dis- 

 ciplinary and liberalizing study than the method of teaching it. Arith- 

 metic may be so taught as to afford a much better training in lan- 

 guage than half of our Latin and Greek teaching affords. There is a 

 certain convertibility in the possible subjects in a curriculum with 

 regard to liberalizing effects which is often lost sight of, but which 

 our best thinkers on the science of education are more and more in- 

 clined to emphasize. 



It has been already remarked that it is a dangerous procedure to 

 apply concrete conclusions in one country to concrete conditions in 

 another. The quoting of German authority in favor of a gymnasium 

 course in order to bolster up the classical course of an average American 

 college is a good instance in point. The German gymnasium gives nine 

 hours a week for five years, and eight hours a week for four years more, 

 to the study of Latin — i. e., seventy-seven hours a week for one year. 

 It devotes to Greek seven hours a week for four years, and six hours a 

 week for two years more-^i. e., forty hours a week for one year, or to 

 both languages the equivalent of one hundred and seventeen hours a 

 week for one year. It will be stating it beyond the truth to put the 

 time devoted to Latin in our average American college up to the close 

 of the sophomore year at five hours a week for six years — i. e., thirty 

 hours a week for one year, and to the Greek at five hours a week for 

 five years — i. e., twenty-five hours a week for one year, or to both 

 together the equivalent of fifty-five hours a week for one year. The 

 German gymnasium thus gives more than twice as many hours to 

 Latin and Greek as the average American college course. Now, the 

 leading German authorities who favor a gymnasium course have re- 

 peatedly opposed lessening the amount of time devoted to these two 

 subjects, and have expressed their opinion to the effect that any con- 

 siderable reduction in the number of hours would be equivalent to 

 depriving the course of all its value — i. e., so far from approving our 

 classical curriculum, they unite in asserting that it is worth nothing 

 whatever ! 



A part of President Porter's argument in the article already re- 

 ferred to proceeds on the assumption that the average college boy 

 acquires enough Latin and Greek to be able to read it easily. What- 

 ever may have been true in President Porter's college-days, the fact 

 must appear evident to any one who has ever visited the sophomore 

 classes in Greek in our American colleges, that the average boy does 

 not acquire ability to translate even such an easy author as Xenophon 



