138 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 500. 



right to call itself Yale University only in 

 1887. 



The college and university instruction, 

 including that given in technical schools, 

 is of interest to us at the present time from 

 several points of view. 



In the first place, in America, as here, 

 great complaint is made that students come 

 to college ill-prepared to do the work;* 

 that gamesf occupy too large a share of 

 attention; and that the bonds of discipline 

 have been unduly slackened of late years. 



* Professor J. J. Stevenson, of New York Uni- 

 versity, deals in a very outspoken manner with 

 this question in the recent January number of 

 The Popular Science Monthly. To quote a few 

 sentences from his article : " The old adage says 

 ' he who would command must first learn to obey.' 

 That American lads are sorely in need of such 

 training is only too evident. * * ♦ Such train- 

 ing means — ^training to think, to reason. Lads 

 too often fail to receive this training in secondary 

 schools, as any instructor who has had to deal 

 Avith freshmen can testify. Secondary schools 

 to-day are little better than cramming houses to 

 fit pupils to answer odds and ends of questions 

 in papers for entrance examinations. Loose 

 thinking and restlessness imder restraint char- 

 acterize the American students in the lower classes 

 at college; lack of home training may be re- 

 sponsible in part for the latter characteristic, 

 inferior teaching in secondary schools for the 

 former." 



t The report of the President of Harvard Col- 

 lege for the year 1901-1902 contains for the first 

 time the report of the chairman of the committee 

 on the regulation of athletic sports. President 

 Eliot's comments thereon are highly instructive: 

 " This report is interesting from several points of 

 view. It exhibits, in the first place, the large 

 number of students who are actively engaged in 

 the competitive sports taken together. The fig- 

 ures given are not accurate, but it is reasonable 

 to suppose that at least two thousand students 

 out of the thirty hundred in Cambridge take 

 some active part in one or more of the thirteen 

 sports in which an enumeration of the number of 

 participants was made. * * * The chairman 

 calls attention to the fact that the expenditures 

 for football are steadily increasing. A quarter 

 part of all who take part in this sport are in- 

 jured enough to lay them up for ten days on the 

 average, and a much larger proportion of those 

 who really play the game are thus injured for the 

 season. The changes in the rules during the past 



Moreover, it is said that those who have 

 been brought up in towns are not such 

 satisfactory students as those who have 

 been brought up in the country. The lat- 

 ter are not only more earnest but more 

 practical. On this account the spirit pre- 

 vailing in some of the western colleges is 

 said to be far better than that met with in 

 many eastern colleges. 



Although the elective system prevails 

 very largely in those eases in which gradua- 

 tion from college is a necessary preliminary 

 to professional study, the course is pre- 

 scribed. It is very noteworthy that the 

 covtrse laid down is a broad one. Thus at 

 the Johns Hopkins University, the follow- 

 ing are the subjects prescribed in the 

 chemical-biological or preliminary medical 

 group : 



H' urs Weekly. 

 First Tear. 



Physics 9 



Chemistry 9 



Rhetoric : 3 



English Composition 4 



Second Tear. 



Chemistry 9 



Biology 9 



French 4 



English Literature 3 



ten years have tended to increase the number of 

 injuries rather than to diminish it. The tem- 

 porary injuries are so numerous that it is im- 

 possible to count on putting any particular eleven 

 men into an important game on a given day. In 

 order to provide the necessary number of substi- 

 tutes for each place, the football squad often num- 

 bers sixty men. Hence large expenditures. The 

 outfit for candidates grows more expensive, be- 

 cause they wear about fourteen pounds weight of 

 padding and armor. On the whole, the game, 

 under the existing rules, tends to become slower 

 and less visible in its details, and therefore less 

 interesting. Moreover, the ethics of the game, 

 which are the imperfect ethics of war, do not 

 improve. The martial axiom — attack the enemy's 

 weakest point — inevitably leads to a deliberate 

 onslaught on the cripple or the convalescent in 

 the opposing line; and the habitual violation of 

 rules, if penalties be escaped, is regarded by many 

 as merely amusing." 



