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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol XII. No. 305. 



It is the protest againt this feeling of 

 superiority, whether real or imagined, 

 which is at the basis of most of the ob- 

 jections now offered to a college education 

 ■as a preparation for the active work of life. 

 The feeling is voiced in the following words 

 from the late Collis P. Huntington. In a 

 magazine article published just before his 

 death, entitled ' Why Young Men should 

 not go to College,' he says: " Somehow or 

 other our schools which teach young people 

 how to talk, do not teach them how to live. 

 It seems to me, that slowly, but surely, 

 there is growing up a stronger and stronger 

 wall of caste, with good, honest labor on one 

 side and frivolous gentility on the other." 



In so far as this charge is true that a 

 college training tends to make those who 

 ■receive it a class apart, and prompts them 

 to make extravagant demands, in just that 

 proportion is it a fair criticism of our system 

 of instruction. We have a right to expect 

 that the college trained man, more than any 

 • other, shall be tolerant and patient. That 

 he shall understand, as no one else can, 

 ■that truth and honesty and virtue belong 

 to no age and to no nation ; that thej' are 

 the property of no partj', and no sect, and 

 no class. And we have a right to expect 

 that, realizing this, he shall have whole- 

 some views regarding human nature. If 

 the college atmosphere does not encourage 

 all this, then the college atmosphere needs 

 quickening. 



In the great wave of enthusiasm for 

 education which has been the remarkable 

 social phenomenon of the last quarter-cen- 

 tury's progress it was, perhaps, to have 

 been anticipated that some mistakes of this 

 kind would occur. When education — and 

 a very narrow conception of that term — was 

 proposed as a cure for all ills, it was natural 

 .that some should assume that the man who 

 jeceived a certain training should also re- 

 ceive, ipso facto, special consideration in the 

 world. 



How far this criticism has been justified 

 in the past I do not feel able to say. I do 

 believe, however, that the college spirit of 

 to- day is wholesome and catholic ; that the 

 men in the higher institutions of learning 

 are in closer touch with the great body of 

 mankind than ever before, and that men 

 who go through college and take their 

 places in the world do so in accordance 

 with the rules of common-sense. 



But beyond all such questions, and in- 

 cluding them all, is another in which the 

 state is vitally interested, and this is the 

 quality of citizenship which our system of 

 education is adapted to produce. This I 

 hesitate to approach, since to discuss it is 

 to open the whole question as to what the 

 object of education is and what subjects 

 should be taught to accomplish that object. 



It is the old question which has been 

 discussed for 2,500 years, and never more 

 vigorously than during the past decade. 

 However we have improved the methods, 

 we have certainly never been able to state 

 the questions involved more clearly than 

 the old Greeks. Listen to Aristotle ; he 

 writes : 



"What, then, is education, and how are 

 we to educate ? As yet there is no agree- 

 ment on these points. Men are not agreed 

 as to what the young should learn, either 

 with a view to perfect training or to the 

 best life. It is not agreed whether educa- 

 tion is to aim at the development of the in- 

 tellect or of the moral character. Nor is it 

 clear whether, in order to bring about these 

 results, we are to train in what leads to 

 virtue, in what is useful for ordinary life, 

 or in abstract science." 



Could any modern state more aptly or 

 in fewer words than these, the questions 

 which have formed the basis of discussion 

 during the last quarter-century among those 

 interested in education, with the marked 

 difference that education for the develop- 

 ment of character is less talked about. 



