Mat 4, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



703 



conger. A larva of the same species sent to 

 Dr. Dean by Professor Grassi, who collected 

 it at Messina, is five inches in length. 



L. S. QUACKENBUSH. 



SHOULD OUR COLLEGES ESTABLISH SUMMER 

 SCHOOLS ? 



A NEW and important feature in the educa- 

 tional scheme of our colleges is the growing 

 tendency toward the establishment of summer 

 schools. According to the report of the Com- 

 missioner of Education there were in 1903 

 over 11,000 students in the summer schools of 

 ■51 of our colleges. About two thirds of these 

 students were women; mainly teachers of sec- 

 ondary schools. The number of students now 

 attending the summer schools is about one 

 tenth as great as the total number enrolled in 

 our colleges throughout the year, and is more 

 than twice as great as the number studying in 

 the graduate schools of our universities. 



The growth of these summer schools in 

 America dates from 1874 when the religious 

 assembly at Lake Chautauqua began the sum- 

 mer training of Sunday-school teachers, and 

 in 1878 this movement grew into the estab- 

 lishment of a general summer school, aiming 

 to disseminate culture chiefly among those 

 who had not enjoyed the benefit of college 

 training. In this the Chautauqua school has 

 achieved well-renowned success, raised the gen- 

 eral level of intelligent appreciation, and 

 broadened the mental horizons of thousands; 

 thus exercising a beneficent influence upon our 

 national life not to be overestimated. 



Such a summer school as that of Chautauqua, 

 independent of any one college but dependent 

 in a large sense upon all, aims chiefly to 

 broaden rather than to deepen culture, and to 

 maintain and develop the best standards of 

 life and thought. It teaches, above all, that 

 lives of the highest value to civilization may 

 be devoted to the true and the beautiful rather 

 than to the material side of progress. Its 

 aim differs from that of the colleges in that 

 it is extensive rather than intensive, broad 

 rather than precise; developing thus a higher 

 standard of general culture, rather than train- 

 ing specialists for professional careers. 



Of late years, however, the summer school 

 has become an established feature of the cur- 

 riculum of our colleges themselves. These 

 summer schools of the colleges are naturally 

 centers of culture which as such must accom- 

 plish much general good, but they often hold 

 out a false hope to those who visit them de- 

 siring to gain precise technical knowledge. 

 One can not accomplish in six weeks what 

 should be done in a year of patient study ac- 

 companied by laboratory experience. The 

 tendency of these college summer schools is 

 to substitute superficiality for depth, and to 

 increase rather than diminish the number of 

 half-trained specialists with which our coun- 

 try is already over-burdened. 



But apart from their more or less beneficial 

 effect upon the student I wish to call attention 

 to an evil influence they are beginning to ex- 

 ert upon those who teach in our colleges. 



Until within a few years the college teacher 

 looked upon his summer vacation as a season 

 for research and broadening study; now fully 

 one half of this once cherished period must be 

 sacrificed to the labor of the dissemination of 

 superficial and elementary instruction. 



What can we hope from our universities if 

 the spirit of research, which already lan- 

 guishes, be killed within them. The Intel- 

 lectual achievement of our highest schools can 

 be measured only by the standard of productive 

 scholarship; not by the amount but by the 

 quality of their instruction. 



Men are not machines to be loaded with 

 knowledge at one brief period in their youth, 

 and then to impart wisdom unchanged 

 throughout the remainder of their days, and 

 yet this development of the summer school in 

 connection with the college is surely cutting 

 down those precious hours when the teacher 

 himself becomes a student. What more 

 stimulating to the teacher or beneficial to the 

 college than a vacation rightly used in re- 

 search, intelligent travel or in contact with 

 his fellow men beyond the college walls. 



Correlated with the growth of the summer 

 school system is the tendency of the college 

 itself to maintain low salaries for its instruc- 

 tors, relying upon the fact that by teaching in 



