214 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



The half-century marked by our celebration today is one of 

 most extraordinary interest to the student of the history of 

 teaching. While eradication of ignorance and development 

 of personal power have been constant aims, there have been 

 marvelous changes in means and methods. 



Fifty years ago there was one great slogan, "mental disci- 

 pline. " For 800 years one type of training had dominated the 

 schools. The first college of our fathers was a survival of the 

 Middle Ages, those twihght days one of the idiosyncrasies of 

 which was a mystical reverence for the number seven. There 

 were seven planets, seven metals, seven days in the week, 

 "seven apertures in a man's head," seven cardinal virtues, 

 seven deadly sins, seven sacraments. Growing out of a curious 

 regard for elements of seven, studies had been divided into 

 groups of three and four. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric had 

 constituted the so-called trivium; arithmetic, geometry, astron- 

 omy, and music, had made up the so-called quadrivium. And 

 the education of fifty years ago, not only in colleges, but also in 

 preparatory schools — education claiming for its watchword, 

 "mental discipline" — was very largely of the trivium- quadri- 

 vium type. 



Already, however, there were signs and portents of change. 

 The names of Darwin and Wallace, Huxley and Tyndall, Louis 

 Agassiz and Asa Gray were commanding attention and respect. 

 That is to say, powerful influences for change were at work, 

 even within the schools and colleges themselves. 



Perhaps of keenest interest to us who are met here today, 

 however, are two influences which as the years have passed have 

 exerted tremendous modifying power — both acting on estab- 

 lished education, not from within the schools, but from the 

 outside. 



It is almost exactly fifty years ago that Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 put into print, and challenged the public with, this question: 

 "What knowledge is of most worth ?" Answering for himself 



