Maeoh 12, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



407 



tion shall be individual and personal. Let 

 US abate the evils of sport by fearlessly- 

 excluding the mob from our intercollegiate 

 contests, and by rigidly limiting the num- 

 ber of those contests. 



In any case, however, let us beware of 

 those theorists who, iu the name of what 

 they caU the American college, want to 

 sunder afresh what the whole course of 

 our modem American development has 

 wisely tended to join, namely, teaching 

 and investigation, the more technical train- 

 ing and the more general cultivation of our 

 youth, as well as the graduate and the 

 undergraduate types of study. I should 

 abhor the name college if this mere name 

 ever led us into such a backward course as 

 some are now advocating. 



Let me say, in conclusion, that, in agree- 

 ment with Mr. Flexner, I myself believe 

 that a large reform of our relations to the 

 secondary schools, and especially an es- 

 sential change in our method of college en- 

 trance requirements and examinations is 

 called for by the present conditions. But 

 over that whole topic, for my poor wits, 

 the clouds of mystery still hang thick. I 

 leave the matter, and aU these now uttered 

 prejudices of mine to the judgment of 

 those who appear to think that they 



know. JOSIAH EOTCE 



AMERICAN COLLEGE EDUCATION AND 

 LIFE^ 



There is evidently a feeling in the 

 minds of the public that there is something 

 the matter with our colleges. The more 

 sensitive and alert educational authorities 

 are likewise aware of certain defects, al- 

 though they may not agree upon the 

 causes. The more or less definite feeling 

 is that college work on the one hand lacks 

 intellectual seriousness, and on the other 

 fails, somehow, to connect vitally with the 

 'An address given before the Section of Educa- 

 tion at the Baltimore meeting of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. 



present needs of society. Questions aa to 

 the length of the course, or the threatened 

 partition of the college between secondary 

 school on the one hand, and the profes- 

 sional schools, including the graduate 

 school, on the other, are really subordinate 

 to this broader question of seriousness and 

 connection. If the college is really worth 

 while we shall doubtless manage the ex- 

 ternal organization of our system so as to 

 secure its continuance. If the conviction 

 becomes general that it is a survival from 

 the past rather than a useful institution 

 for the present, the really vigorous and 

 ambitious young men will pass it by, and 

 the public will not care to maintain it for 

 the benefit of those who wish merely to 

 spend four pleasant years. 



The two chief questions, I conceive, are 

 the • value of its intellectual ideals and 

 methods, and the value of its corporate or 

 social life at a certain period in the devel- 

 opment of young men and women. I shall 

 confine myself chiefly to the former, in the 

 belief that the intellectual problem needs 

 to be attacked first. The present paper 

 aims to show (1) that the work of the col- 

 leges up to about twenty-five or thirty 

 years ago fitted the social situation in both 

 ideal and method; (2) that in the past 

 three decades there has come to be a gap 

 between theory and practise to which the 

 colleges are only in part adjusted; and (3) 

 that the solution is likely to lie through 

 a reconstruction of the college ideal of 

 liberal education under the influence of 

 new vocational methods and ideals. In 

 return we may hope for a gradual permea- 

 tion of vocations and social institutions by 

 the new spirit and method, which will com- 

 plete the readjustment between college 

 and life. 



I. THE FOEMER IDEAL AND METHOD OP 

 COLLEGE AND OP LIFE 



The intellectual ideal of the college has 



