52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



UNTVEBSITY EEFOEMS 



By STEWART PATON, M.D. 



PRINCETON. N. J. 



AT present there is a wide-spread popular interest in all questions 

 relating to the subject of educational reform, and it may be said 

 with truth of the public, " Thou criest after knowledge and liftest up 

 thy voice for understanding." The discussion is general and not 

 limited to any one locality, nor confined to any particular social class. 

 Over their cups of afternoon tea Mrs. Jones discusses with Mrs. Brown 

 the respective merits of different educational systems, and at the club 

 many an old graduate is up in arms at the mere suggestion that the 

 boys at college are now made to spend too much time over their books ! 

 College presidents in their public utterances are decidedly optimistic in 

 regard to the prospective value of this or that proposed change in the 

 curriculum as hastening the day when the colts driven to water will 

 drink eagerly from the fount of knowledge. It is fortunate that the 

 note of optimism has been so loudly sounded by prominent educators, 

 for only those who set out with hope may keep the road across the plain 

 in which lies many a miry " slough of despond." 



The task of a university president is no sinecure. The public, 

 which includes many fond parents, is beginning vaguely to realize that 

 something is wrong with our educational system, and as many a boy 

 about to graduate from the university fails to appreciate the value of 

 culture and has no overwhelming love for learning, it is only natural 

 that the parental disappointment should attribute the failure to the 

 last person controlling the throttle of the educational machine, namely 

 the college president. At once the system is blamed, changes are pro- 

 posed, new hopes are aroused, a general culture is promised, the elect- 

 ive system is dropped, courses are prescribed, the boys are forced to 

 work, and then believing a panacea has been found the public tempo- 

 rarily loses interest in the discussion. 



Again the machine grinds on until some one makes the discovery 

 that the majority of the undergraduates do not read " Culture and 

 Anarchy," nor do their copies of the " Novum Organum " show signs 

 of being well-thumbed. The wave of public interest rises again and 

 breaks with such force that the foundations of more than one institu- 

 tion of learning are shaken. The army of the Philistines not having 

 been routed by the frontal attack, strategy is substituted for force, and 

 with the same generals in command a flanking movement is planned. 

 The functions of the brain and nervous system are to be properly 





