May 4, 1900.] 



SCmNGE. 



687 



THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM. 



Let US now consider in what way the 

 medical school of the immediate future is 

 likely to diifer from that of the present 

 time with regard to the subject matter of 

 instruction. The most striking phenome- 

 non presenting itself to the educator of to- 

 day is the recent enormous widening of the 

 educational horizon. "The immense deep- 

 ening and widening of human knowledge 

 in the nineteenth century and the increasing 

 sense of the sanctity of the individual's gifts 

 and will power "* are the fundamental facts 

 which underlie the development of the 

 elective system, but it is important to bear 

 in mind that, as Professor Smith observes, f 

 this development has been " due not so 

 much to increase of knowledge — for not 

 all new knowledge is straightway fit for 

 educational purposes — but rather to the 

 conversion of new fields of knowledge to 

 the uses of education." 



A discussion of the elective system of edu- 

 cation with its attendant advantages and 

 dangers would require far more time than I 

 have at my disposal and I must content 

 myself with pointing out the possibility that, 

 in this period of transition, the educational 

 pendulum may have swung to an extreme 

 position and that too much attention has 

 been given to the accidental differences of 

 pupils while the essential similarity of their 

 natures has been lost sight of. In discus- 

 sions on individuality as a basis for the 

 elective system one sometimes hears the 

 statement (attributed to Leibnitz) that no 

 two leaves of the same tree are alike. This 

 dissimilarity however, does not prevent 

 them from all elaborating the same sap and 

 it is, moreover, always associated with sufiB- 

 cient essential similarity to enable any one, 

 with even the most elementary knowledge 

 of trees, to distinguish the leaves of an oak 

 from those of a maple. 



*C. W. Eliot, Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1899, p. 443. 

 t C. L. Smith, Atlantic 3fonthly, Feb., 1900, p. 219. 



While admitting that some of the extreme 

 positions now maintained by the advocates 

 of the elective system may, in the future, 

 have to be abandoned, no one can doubt the 

 wisdom of adapting the education to the 

 powers of the mind to be educated and of 

 allowing, in the case of advanced students, 

 the choice of the individual to be a deter- 

 mining factor in the selection of studies. 

 Let us, therefore, enquire to what extent 

 the elective system may properly find a place 

 in the curriculum of our medical schools. 

 That it forms an essential feature of our 

 postgraduate schools of medicine scarcely 

 needs to be mentioned, for these schools 

 have been organized for the express pur- 

 pose of enabling graduates in medicine to 

 select such subjects for study as may seem 

 to them desirable and to acquire more ad- 

 vanced knowledge than was possible in the 

 undergraduate course. Moreover, in some 

 of our larger schools, since the establish- 

 ment of the compulsory four years' course, 

 a portion of the instruction of the fourth 

 year has been given in elective courses in 

 various specialties. The elective system in 

 medicine is, therefore, not altogether a 

 novelty, and the question now before us is 

 whether it may be profitably extended to 

 the earlier years of the course. 



In his remarks at the dinner of the Har- 

 vard Medical Alumni Association in 1895, 

 President Eliot used the following language : 

 " There ought to be in the Harvard Med- 

 ical School an extended instruction far be- 

 yond the limits of any one student's ca- 

 pacity. This involves, of course, some op- 

 tional or elective system within the school 

 itself, whereby the individual student should 

 take what is, for him, the best four years' 

 worth, the faculty supplying teaching which 

 it might take a single student eight, twelve 

 or twenty years to pursue."* 



One year ago last December, in an ad- 

 dress which I had the honor to deliver in 



* Bulletin Harv. Med. Alumni Assoc, No. 8, p. 40. 



