JOC Report on a Course of Liberal Education. 



We deem it to be indispensable to a proper adjustment of 

 our collegiate system, that there should be in it both Profes- 

 sors and Tutors. There is wanted, on the one hand, the ex- 

 perience of those who have been long resident at the institu- 

 tion, and on the other, the fresh and minute information oi 

 those who, having more recently mingled with the students, 

 have a distinct recollection of their peculiar feelings, prejudi- 

 ces, and habits of thinking. At the head of each great divi- 

 sion of science, it is necessary that there should be a Profes- 

 sor, to superintend the department, to arrange the plan of 

 instruction, to regulate the mode of conducting it, and to 

 teach the more important and difficult parts of the subject. 

 But students in a college, who have just entered on the first 

 elements of science, are not principally occupied with the 

 more abstruse and disputable points. Their attention ought 

 not to be solely or mainly directed to the latest discoveries. 

 They have first to learn the principles which have been in a 

 course of investigation, through successive ages ; and have 

 now become simplified and settled. Before arriving at re- 

 gions hitherto unexplored, they must pass over the interven- 

 ing cultivated ground. The Professor at the head of a de- 

 partment may, therefore, be greatly aided, in some parts of 

 the course of instruction, by those who are not as deeply 

 versed as himself in all the intricacies of the science. Indeed 

 we doubt, whether elementary principles are always taught 

 to the best advantage, by those whose researches have car- 

 ried them so far beyond these simpler truths, that they come 

 back to them with reluctance and distaste. Would Sir Isaac 

 Newton have excelled all others of his day, in teaching tlic 

 common rules of arithmetic ? Young men have often the 

 most ardor, in communicating familiar principles, and in re- 

 moving those lighter difficulties of the pupil, which, not long 

 since, were found lying across their own path. 



In the internal police of the institution, as the students are 

 gathered into one family, it is deemed an essential provision, 

 that some of the officers should constitute a portion of this 

 family ; being always present with them, not only at their 

 meals, and during the business of the day; but in the hours 

 allotted to rest. The arrangement is such, that in our col- 

 lege buildings, there is no room occupied by students, which 

 is not near to the chamber of one of the officers. 



But the feature in our system which renders a considera- 

 ble number of tutors indispensable, is the subdivision of ou»- 



