30 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



cultural CoUeije that it is seekino; to confer the greatest benefit 

 upon its students, and thus to advance industrial education, by 

 raising its standard and increasing the requirements for 

 admission. 



I wonder if you understand how much of the heroic there 

 was in such action when President Goodell, together with 

 the faculty and the trustees of that college, consented to 

 raise the standard, at the risk of decreasing the numbers. It 

 was a brave, honorable, manly thing for them to do ; and 

 honor will be done them for it as surely as truth is truth, 

 as surely as God gives the final mastery to that which is 

 right and perfect. 



Three things ought to be demanded of every candidate for 

 collegiate standing : a thorough preparatory training in 

 mathematics, up to the point now commonly fixed upon by 

 our colleges ; a thorough training in English. (I wish I 

 might show some of the English that we get, or at least some 

 of the things that are supposed to l)e English, but are not. 

 How can you give a college training, building up the vast 

 superstructure, with no foundation? We ought to demand 

 of our public schools more and more insistently that they 

 allow no boy, no girl, to go out from their doors without 

 understanding something of the use, the power and the 

 beauty of his native tongue. There is danger of giving over- 

 much attention to scientific training. We are carrying that 

 too far, — not teaching too much science, but too many 

 sciences. There is a vast distinction between the two things. 

 Instead of developing in our students the scientific spirit, I 

 think we have tried to cram them with facts.) There should 

 be, I say, a thorough training in English, including a course 

 extending over not less than two years ; a touch of scientific 

 teaching, enough to make the student familiar with the 

 scientific spirit and method ; and a thorough discipline in 

 some language which has a fixed pedagogical form, prefer- 

 ably Latin. The technical institution may not have Latin in 

 its course ; that is not at all to the point. The study of one 

 language which can be progressively taught is of peculiar 

 educational value, even if the student does not expect 

 ever to use the lano-uage itself. German would serve 

 almost as well as Latin, French almost as well as German. 



