702 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



COLLEGIATE INFLUENCE UPON THE 

 LOWER EDUCATION. 



THERE is one aspect of the broad 

 classical controversy of momentous 

 importance, but whicb has been mucb 

 neglected in the general discussion of 

 the subject. We refer to the relation of 

 our collegiate system to the system of 

 education in the schools of lower grade. 

 It is only by scrutinizing this relation 

 that we can really appreciate the extent 

 of the practical antagonism between the 

 classical and the scientific systems ot 

 study, and recognize how completely 

 the colleges are all on one side in this 

 issue. 



We are abundantly assured that, 

 whatever may have been the case in the 

 past, there is now no ground of com- 

 plaint that the dead languages usurp 

 too much attention, while the sciences 

 are correspondingly neglected. The cur- 

 riculums are appealed to to show that 

 classical studies ai'e no longer in the 

 way of science, which is every year re- 

 ceiving increasing attention in these 

 institutions. New laboratories, observa- 

 tories, and museums, are pointed at to 

 show the augm'enting facilities of sci- 

 entific study, and we are told that, by 

 the growing optional system, the stu- 

 dent is more and more allowed a choice 

 of subjects when he enters college, which 

 enables him, if he likes, to give a larger 

 portion if not his entire time to science. 



But all this does not mean so much 

 as it appears to mean. We are not for 

 a moment to regard the influence of the 

 colleges as limited to the students who 

 come under their direct control. They 

 exert a varied and powerful influence 

 upon the secondary schools, upon the 

 methods of early teaching, and upon 

 both the youthful and adult mind of 

 the community at large, which is over- 

 whelmingly in behalf of the classics, and 



solid against science. They not only de- 

 termine the prior studies of the great 

 numbers who enter college, but they 

 set the standards of education for mul- 

 titudes who never pass to the higher 

 institutions. They sustain and they en- 

 force an ideal of culture which shapes 

 the policy and fixes the character of 

 the whole system of instruction that 

 deals with the common education of 

 the people. The alleged liberality im- 

 plied by the optional system is mis- 

 leading, if it is taken to imply any real 

 liberty of the student to choose his 

 studies untrammeled by college require- 

 ments, for not the slightest option is 

 allowed as between the dead languages 

 and the sciences in that prior period 

 when the youthful mind receives its 

 bent in the lower or preparatory schools. 

 The relaxation of classical demands after 

 admission to college, so far from indi- 

 cating a diminished exaction of dead- 

 language studies, is accompanied by an 

 increasing stringency of requirement in 

 these subjects before college is entered. 

 With increasing option in college the 

 standard of preparation is raised, which 

 means that more Greek and Latin is 

 forced upon the preparatory schools. 

 The point of strain is shifted, but this 

 is done in such a way as greatly to 

 aggravate the evils of classical study. 

 The worst influence of the colleges upon 

 general education, as we have often 

 maintained, is their reactive effect upon 

 the preparatory schools, and the whole 

 secondary system of instruction to which 

 the youthful mind of the country is 

 subjected. By their demands upon these 

 institutions, the colleges lend their in- 

 fluence to maintain throughout the com- 

 munity an ideal of culture that is pre- 

 dominantly and in effect exclusively 

 classical. Modern studies have no status, 

 no recognition in the preparatory stage 



