OCTOBEK 28, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



581 



with shallow views and class preconcep- 

 tions. 



The above are some of the familiar evi- 

 dences of the effect of commercial ideas of 

 obligation and necessity on the adminis- 

 tration of American colleges; when it 

 comes to the direct application of educa- 

 tional methods, there is evidence equally 

 strong of the influence of the same ideas. 

 Education, in the first place, is regarded 

 as an economic tool, and there is no ability 

 shown to administer it as anything else. 

 There is an energy and sincerity behind in- 

 struction in professional subjects that 

 forms a strong contrast with the listless 

 and futile manner in which subjects hav- 

 ing no readily discernible economic im- 

 portance are dealt with. The result of this 

 is a far higher efficiency in professional 

 and technical schools than in colleges de- 

 voting themselves to the humanities; but 

 it is an efficiency that is only relatively 

 high, however; for the disposition to con- 

 sider economic results alone leads to the 

 elimination or neglect in such schools of 

 all knowledge that has not a direct, or at 

 least a fairly obvious indirect vocational 

 application. The effect of this narrowness 

 is to suppress all initiative except in eco- 

 nomic activity, and as a consequence, 

 American education has been unable to in- 

 spire any interest in pure science, in which 

 the nation's achievements have been in- 

 significant, while its activity and success 

 in the commercial application of scientific 

 principles is, perhaps, unequalled among 

 modei-n peoples. 



When we come to education which can 

 not be regarded as an economic tool, and 

 which must be justified on other grounds, 

 we find the influence of a commercial phi- 

 losophy less direct, its main effect being 

 to make American ideas on such points 

 shallow and almost childish, by engrossing 

 the national intellect so completely with 



commercial conceptions as to make it help- 

 less with anything else. The main way in 

 which such education is justified is as the 

 acquisition of information; and this view 

 is very prevalent, for it has much to recom- 

 mend it: it simplifies instruction by ma- 

 king it the mere distribution of informa- 

 tion; and it makes it easy to determine 

 scholarship by estimating it according to 

 the amount of information possessed. 

 Though not the fundamental reason for it, 

 this view is instrumental in bringing about 

 the excessive specialization that char- 

 acterizes American even more than Euro- 

 pean education. Of course if education is 

 the acquisition of information, no man 

 can ever be completely educated, for the 

 total of information is too great for the 

 capacity of any one man ; so the only thing 

 to do is to limit one's aims to the acquisi- 

 tion of a manageable portion of it, and to 

 confine all effort and interest to that por- 

 tion alone. This leads to a lack of breadth, 

 and to intellectual intolerance; lack of 

 understanding of other subjects inducing 

 contempt for them, while exclusive devo- 

 tion to a single branch of learning gives 

 an exaggerated idea of its importance. 

 This intolerance exhibits itself by bring- 

 ing about competition instead of coopera- 

 tion between men who give instruction in 

 different subjects. It is said by the gradu- 

 ates of one of the largest scientific schools 

 in the country, that the majority of its 

 students will cheat, without any conscious- 

 nass of doing wrong, in any subject that is 

 not a professional one. It is probable that 

 this statement is somewhat exaggerated; 

 but it is undoubtedly a fact that the un- 

 conscious attitude of many men high in 

 academic circles is one of amused con- 

 tempt for all branches of knowledge other 

 than their own, and in spite of the fact 

 that they are very insistent on the neces- 

 sity of a broad education, their own in- 



