NOYEMBEB 9, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



579 



ods. The kindergarten and its accompany- 

 ing ideas have come for the children, and 

 for the young men has come the change 

 from the college, with its one or two courses 

 carefully selected and rigidly prescribed by 

 the faculty, to the univereity with as many 

 different courses as there are young men, 

 and in which, under the elective system, 

 each student is given the choice of all of 

 his studies. 



The fundamental idea back of the change 

 from college to university is excellent; 

 namely, that of providing a far greater 

 variety in the courses to suit the different 

 tastes and abilities of the students, and to 

 especially prepare them for their future 

 occupations. Accompanying, however, this 

 great step in advance, and yet, so far as I 

 can see, in no way logically connected with 

 it, has come the false step of giving our 

 young men in many ways a greater liberty 

 than is allowed, on the whole, to any other 

 class of active workers; and of handing 

 over to them the final decision in a subject 

 most needing a master mind. 



Commercial, manufacturing and other 

 enterprises in which many men cooperate, 

 are managed more and more by delegating 

 all important decisions to a few men whose 

 judgment has been trained through long 

 experience, study and observation in those 

 matters which they are called upon to de- 

 cide. Yet many of our universities are 

 managed by giving over to the young man, 

 under the elective system, the final decision 

 as to what studies will best fit him for his 

 life's work, although he has, of necessity, 

 but the vaguest idea of the nature of the 

 subjects which lie before him. It is almost 

 like asking him to lift himself up by his 

 boot straps. 



I can not but think that in changing 

 country we have modeled largely after the 

 English and German universities, which, as 

 we know, are influenced in their manage- 

 ment by traditions handed down through 



several hundred years; and that in adopt- 

 ing the great university idea of a variety 

 of courses, we have at the same time blindly 

 accepted the foreign idea of the elective 

 system accompanied by a lax discipline, 

 both of which are better suited to medieval 

 times when each man worked for himself 

 than to the present day when the road to 

 success lies through true cooperation. 



In this change, also, too great stress has 

 been laid upon those elements leading to 

 knowledge or book learning on the part of 

 the student and too little upon the develop- 

 ment of his character. 



The kindergarten also, which has proved 

 so great a help in training the younger 

 children, making them observant and giving 

 them a certain control over themselves, has 

 brought with it one idea which has 

 wrought great harm, and yet this bad idea 

 is in no way properly or logically connected 

 with the underlying principles of the kind- 

 ergarten. 



Somehow the average kindergarten child 

 gets a firm conviction that it is the duty 

 of the teacher to make things interesting 

 and amusing, and from this follows soon 

 the notion that if he does not like his studies 

 and fails to learn much, it is largely the 

 teacher's fault. Now, whatever views the 

 parents or the teachers themselves should 

 hold upon the duties of teachers, there is 

 no doubt that the boys should have firmly 

 in their heads the good old-fashioned idea 

 that it is their duty to learn, and not that 

 it is the duty of the teacher to teach them. 



Along with the kindergarten plan of in- 

 teresting and amusing children, the idea 

 has taken firm hold in a large portion of 

 the educational world that the child and 

 young man should be free to develop nat- 

 urally, like a beautiful plant or flower. 

 This may again be an excellent view for 

 the older person to hold, but it is a dis- 

 tinctly bad one for the young man to act 



