present great prosperity by becoming the pioneer in a general
educational movement. What made the movement general was the dread of
flimsy study. Our world is larger than the one our grandfathers
inhabited; it is more minutely subdivided, more finely related, more
subtly and broadly known. The rise of physical science and the
enlargement of humanistic interests oblige the college of to-day to
teach elaborately many topics which formerly were not taught at all.
Not so many years ago a liberal education prepared men almost
exclusively for the four professions,--preaching, teaching, medicine,
and law. In the first century of its existence one half the graduates
of Harvard became ministers. Of the graduates of the last ten years a
full third have entered none of the four professions. With a narrow
field of knowledge, and with students who required no great variety
of training, the task of a college was simple. A single programme
decently covered the needs of all. But as the field of knowledge
widened, and men began to notice a difference between its contents
and those of the college curriculum, an effort was made to enlarge
the latter by adding subjects from the former. Modern languages crept
in, followed by sciences, political economy, new departments of
history, literature, art, philosophy. For the most part, these were
added to the studies already taught. But the length of college days
is limited. The life of man has not extended with the extension of
science. To multiply subjects was soon found equivalent to cheapening
knowledge. Where three subjects are studied in place of one, each is
pushed only one third as far. A crowded curriculum is a curriculum
of superficialities, where men are forever occupied with alphabets and
multiplication-tables,--elementary matters, containing little mental
nutriment. Thoroughgoing discipline, the acquisition of habits of
intellectual mastery, calls for acquaintance with knowledge in its
higher ranges, and there is no way of reaching these remoter regions
during the brief season of college life except by dividing the field
and pressing along paths where personal friction is least.
Accordingly, alternative options began to be allowed, at first between
the new subjects introduced, then between these and the old ones.
But in this inevitable admission of option a new principle was
introduced whose germinal force could not afterwards be stayed. The old
conception had been that there were certain matters a knowledge of
which constituted a liberal education. Compared with the possession
of these, the temper of the receiving mind was a secondary affair. This
view became untenable. Under the new conditions, college faculties were
forced to recognize personal aptitudes, and to stake intellectual
gains upon them. In assessing the worth of studies, attention was
thus withdrawn from their subject-matter and transferred to the
response they called forth in the apprehender. Hence arose a new
ideal of education, in which temper of mind had preeminence over
_quaesita_, the guidance of the powers of knowing over the store of
matters known. The new education has accordingly passed through two
stages of development: first, in order to avoid superficiality when
knowledge was coming in like a flood, it was found necessary to admit
choice; secondly, in the very necessity of this admission was disclosed
a more spiritual ideal of the relation of the mind of man to knowledge.
And this new ideal, I hold, should now commend itself not as a thing
good enough if collateral, but as a principle, organic and exclusive. To
justify its dominance a single compendious reason is sufficient: it
uplifts character as no other training can, and through influence on
character it ennobles all methods of teaching and discipline. We say to
our student at Harvard, "Study Greek, German, history, or botany,--what
you will; the one thing of consequence is that you should will to study
something." The moral factor is thus put forward, where it belongs. The
will is honored as of prime consequence. Other systems treat it as a
merely concurrent and auxiliar force. They try to smuggle it into
operation wrapped in a mass of matter-of-course performances. It is the
distinctive merit of the elective system that it strips off disguises,
places the great facts of the moral life in the foreground, forces the
student to be conscious of what he is doing, permits him to become a
partaker in his own work, and makes him perceive that gains and losses
are immediately connected with a volitional attitude. When such a
consciousness is aroused, every step in knowledge becomes a step toward
maturity. There is no sudden transformation, but the boy comes
gradually to perceive that in the determination of the will are found
the promise and potency of every form of life. Many people seem to
suppose that at some epoch in the life of a young man the capacity to
choose starts up of itself, ready-made. It is not so. Choice, like other
human powers, needs practice for strength. To learn how to choose, we
must choose. Keep a boy from exercising his will during the formative
period from eighteen to twenty-two, and you turn him into the world a
child when by years he should be a man. To permit choice is dangerous;
but not to permit it is more dangerous; for it renders dependency
habitual, places outside the character those springs of action which
should be set within it, treats personal adhesion as of little account,
and through anxiety to shield a young life from evil cuts it off from
opportunities of virile good. Even when successful, the directive
process breeds an excellence not to be desired. Plants and stones commit
no errors. They are under a prescribed system and follow given laws.
Personal man is in continual danger, for to self-direction is attached
the prerogative of sin. For building up a moral manhood, the very errors
of choice are serviceable.
I am not describing theoretic advantages. A manlier type of character
actually appears as the elective principle extends. The signs of the
better life are not easy to communicate to those who have not lived
in the peculiar world of a college. A greater ease in uprightness, a
quicker response to studious appeal, a deeper seriousness, still
keeping relish for merriment, a readier amenability to considerations
of order, an increase of courtesy, a growing disregard of coarseness
and vice, a decay of the boyish fancy that it is girlish to show
enthusiasm,--tendencies in these directions, hardly perceptible to
others, gladden the watchful heart of a teacher and assure him that his
work is not returning to him void. Every company of young men has a
notion of what it is "gentlemanly" to do. Into this current ideal the
most artificial and incongruous elements enter. Perhaps it is
counted "good form" to haze a freshman, to wear the correctest cut of
trousers, to have a big biceps muscle, or to be reputed a man of
brains. Whatever the notion, it is allegiance to some such blind
ideal, rather than the acceptance of abstract principles of conduct,
which guides a young man's life. To change ever so little these
influential ideals is the ambition of the educator; but they are
persistent things, held with the amazing conservatism of youth. When I
say that a better tone prevails as the elective system takes root, I
mean that I find the word "gentleman," as it drops from student
mouths, enlarging and deepening its meaning from year to year,
departing from its usage as a term of outward description and drawing
to itself qualities more interior. Direct evidence on a matter so
elusive can hardly be given, but I can throw a few sidelights upon it.
Hazing, window-smashing, disturbing a lecture-room, are things of the
past. The office of proctor--the literary policeman of the olden
time--has become a sinecure. Several years ago the Faculty awarded
Honorable Mention at graduation to students who attained a high rank
in three or more courses of a single department. The honor was not
an exalted one, but being well within the powers of all it soon became
"not quite the thing" to graduate without it. In the last senior class
91 men out of 191 received Honorable Mention. This last fact shows
that a decent scholarship has become reputable. But more than this is
true: the rank which is reckoned decent scholarship is steadily
rising. I would not overstate the improvement. The scale of marking
itself may have risen slightly. But taking the central scholar of
each class during the last ten years,--the scholar, that is, who stands
midway between the head and the foot,--this presumably average person
has received the following marks, the maximum being 100:--
YEAR 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883
-75 -76 -77 -78 -79 -80 -81 -82 -83 -84
----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
Fresh. 59 55 57 56 62 62 65 67 64 63
Soph. 59 64 63 65 67 68 70 69 69 68
Jun. 67 65 66 67 70 68 72 75 72 72
Sen. 67 70 70 73 76 73 77 75 79 81
It will be observed that the marks in this table become higher as the
student approaches the end of his course and reaches the years where the
elective principle is least restricted. Let the eye pass from the left
upper corner of the table to the right lower corner and take in the full
significance of a change which has transformed freshmen, doomed to
prescribed studies and half of them ranking below sixty per cent, into
seniors so energetic that half of them win four fifths of a perfect mark
in four electives. It is not only the poor who are affected in this way.
About half the men who appear on the Rank List each year receive no
pecuniary aid, and are probably not needy men.
But it may be suspected that high marks mean easy studies. The many
different lines of work cannot be equally severe, and it is said that
those which call for least exertion will be sure to prove the favorites.
As this charge of "soft" courses is the stock objection to the elective
system, I shall be obliged to examine it somewhat minutely. Like most of
the popular objections, it rests on an _a priori_ assumption that thus
things must be. Statistics all run the other way. Yet I am not surprised
that people believe it. I believed it once myself when I knew nothing
but prescribed systems. Under these, it certainly is true that ease is
the main factor in making a study popular. When choice is permitted, the
factor of interest gets freer play, and exerts an influence that would
not be anticipated by those who have never seen it in operation. Severe
studies are often highly popular if the subject is attractive and the
teaching clear. Here is a list of the fifteen courses which in 1883-84
(the last year for which returns are complete) contained the largest
numbers of seniors and juniors, those classes being at that time the
only ones which had no prescribed studies: Mill's political economy, 125
seniors and juniors; European history from the middle of the eighteenth
century, 102; history of ancient art, 80; comparative zoology, 58;
political and constitutional history of the United States, 56;
psychology, 52; geology, 47; constitutional government of England and
the United States, 45; advanced geology, with field work, 43; Homer,
sixteen books, 40; ethics, 38; logic, and introduction to philosophy,
38; Shakespeare, six plays, 37; economic history, advanced course, 36;
legal history of England to the sixteenth century, 35. In these years
the senior and junior classes together contained 404 men, who chose four
electives apiece. In all, therefore, 1616 choices were made. The above
list shows 832; so that, as nearly as may be, one half of the total work
of two years is here represented. The other half was devoted to
interests more special, which were pursued in smaller companies.
Are these choices unwise? Are they not the studies which should largely
occupy a young man's thoughts toward the close of his college life? They
are the ones most frequently set for the senior and junior years by
colleges which retain prescribed studies. From year to year choices
differ a little. The courses at the lower end of the list may give place
to others which do not appear here. I print the list simply to indicate
the general character of the studies elected. In it appears only one out
of all the modern languages, and that, too, a course in pure literature
in which the marking is not reputed tender. Another year a course of
French or German might come in; but ordinarily--except when chosen by
specialists--the languages, modern and ancient, are elected most largely
during the sophomore year. Following directly the prescribed linguistic
studies of the freshman year, they are deservedly among the most
popular, though not the easiest, courses. In nearly half the courses
here shown no text-book is used, and the amount of reading necessary for
getting an average mark is large. A shelf of books representing original
authorities is reserved by the instructor at the Library, and the pupil
is sent there to prepare his work.
How, it will be asked, are choices so judicious secured? Simply by
making them deliberate. Last June studies were chosen for the coming
year. During the previous month students were discussing with one
another what their electives should be. How this or that course is
conducted, what are the peculiarities of its teacher, what is the
proportion in it between work given and gains had, are matters which
then interest the inhabitants of Hollis and Holyoke as stocks interest
Wall Street. Most students, too, have some intimacy with one or another
member of the Faculty, to whom they are in the habit of referring
perplexities. This advice is now sought, and often discreetly rejected.
The Elective Pamphlet is for a time the best-read book in college. The
perplexing question is, What courses to give up? All find too many which
they wish to take. The pamphlet of this year offers 189 courses, divided
among twenty departments. The five modern languages, for example, offer,
all told, 34 different courses; Sanskrit, Persian, Assyrian, Hebrew, and
Arabic, 14; Greek and Latin, 18 each; natural history, 19; physics and
chemistry, 18; mathematics, 18; history and philosophy, 12 each; the
fine arts, including music, 11; political economy, 7; Roman law, 2.
These numbers will show the range of choice; on its extent a great deal
of the efficiency of the system depends.[4] After the electives are
chosen and reported in writing to the Dean, the long vacation begins,
when plans of study come under the scrutiny of parents, of the parish
minister, or of the college graduate who lives in the next street. Until
September 21, any elective may be changed on notice sent to the Dean.
During the first ten days of the term, no changes are allowed. This is a
time of trial, when one sees for himself his chosen studies. Afterwards,
for a short time, changes are easy, if the instructors consent. For the
remainder of the year no change is possible, unless the reasons for
change appear to the Dean important. Other restrictions on the freedom
of choice will readily be understood without explanation. Advanced
studies cannot be taken till preliminary ones are passed. Notices are
published by the French and German departments that students who elect
those languages must be placed where proficiency fits them to go.
Courses especially technical in character are marked with a star in the
Elective Pamphlet, and cannot be chosen till the instructor is
consulted.
By means like these the Faculty try to prevent the wasting of time over
unprofitable studies. Of course they do not succeed. I should roughly
guess that a quarter, possibly a third, of the choices made might be
improved. This estimate is based on the answers I have received to a
question put to some fifty recent graduates: "In the light of your
present experience, how many of your electives would you change?" I
seldom find a man who would not change some; still more rarely one who
would change one half. As I look back on my own college days, spent
chiefly on prescribed studies, I see that to make these serve my needs
more than half should have been different. There was Anglo-Saxon, for
example, which was required of all, no English literature being
permitted. A course in advanced chemical physics, serviceable no doubt
to some of my classmates, came upon me prematurely, and stirred so
intense an aversion to physical study that subsequent years were
troubled to overcome it. One meagre meal of philosophy was perhaps as
much as most of us seniors could digest, but I went away hungry for
more. I loved Greek, but for two years I was subject to the instructions
of a certain professor, now dead, who was one of the most learned
scholars and unprofitable teachers I ever knew. Of the studies which
brought me benefit, few did so in any vigorous fashion. Every reader
will parallel my experience from his own. Prescribed studies may be
ill-judged or ill-adapted, ill-timed or ill-taught, but none the less
inexorably they fall on just and unjust. The wastes of choice chiefly
affect the shiftless and the dull, men who cannot be harmed much by
being wasted. The wastes of prescription ravage the energetic, the
clear-sighted, the original,--the very classes who stand in greatest
need of protection. What I would assert, therefore, is not that in the
elective system we have discovered the secret of stopping educational
waste. That will go on as long as men need teaching. I simply hold that
the monstrous and peculiarly pernicious wastes of the old system are now
being reduced to a minimum. Select your cloth discreetly, order the best
tailor in town to make it up, and you will still require patience for
many misfits; but they will be fewer, at any rate, than when garments
are served out to you and the whole regiment by the government
quartermaster.
Nobody who has taught both elective and prescribed studies need be told
how the instruction in the two cases differs. With perfunctory students,
a teacher is concerned with devices for forcing his pupils onward.
Teaching becomes a secondary affair; the time for it is exhausted in
questioning possible shirks. Information must be elicited, not imparted.
The text-book, with its fixed lessons, is a thing of consequence. It is
the teacher's business to watch his pupils, to see that they carry off
the requisite knowledge; their business, then, it soon becomes to try to
escape without it. Between teacher and scholar there goes on an ignoble
game of matching wits, in which the teacher is smart if he can catch a
boy, and the boy is smart if he can know nothing without being found
out. Because of this supposed antagonism of interests American higher
education seldom escapes an air of unreality. We seem to be at the opera
bouffe. A boy appears at the learning-shop, purchases his parcel of
knowledge, and then tries to toss it under the counter and dodge out of
the door before the shopman can be quick enough to make him carry off
the goods. Nothing can cure such folly except insistence that pupil's
neglect is not teacher's injury. The elective system points out to a man
that he has something at stake in a study, and so trains him to look
upon time squandered as a personal loss. Where this consciousness can be
presumed, a higher style of teaching becomes possible. Methods spring up
unlike formal lectures, unlike humdrum recitations. The student
acquires--what he will need in after life--the power to look up a single
subject in many books. Theses are written; discussions held; in higher
courses, problems of research supersede defined tasks. During 1860-61,
fifty-six per cent of the Harvard undergraduates consulted the college
library; during 1883-84, eighty-five per cent.
In a similar way governmental problems change their character.
Formerly, it was assumed that a student who followed his own wishes
would be indisposed to attend recitations. Penalties were accordingly
established to compel him to come. At present, there is not one of his
twelve recitations a week which a Harvard student might not "cut."
Of course I do not mean that unlimited absence is allowed. Any one
who did not appear for a week would be asked what he was doing. But
for several years there has been no mechanical regulation,--so much
absence, so much penalty. I had the curiosity to see how largely,
under this system of trust, the last senior class had cared to stay
away. I counted all absences, excused and unexcused. Some men had been
sick for considerable periods; some had been worthless, and had
shamelessly abused their freedom. Reckoning in all misdeeds and all
misfortunes, I found that on the average each man had been absent a
little less than twice a week.[5] The test of high character is the
amount of freedom it will absorb without going to pieces. The elective
system enlarges the capacity to absorb freedom undisturbed. But it
would be unfair to imply that the new spirit is awakened in students
alone. Professors are themselves instructed. The obstacles to their
proper work, those severest of all obstacles which come from
defective sympathy, are cleared away. A teacher draws near his class,
and learns what he can do for it. Long ago it was said that among the
Gentiles--people spiritually rude--great ones exercised authority,
while in a state of righteousness this should not be so; there the
leader would estimate his importance by his serviceability. It was a
teacher who spoke, and he spoke to teachers. To-day teachers'
dangers lie in the same direction. Always dealing with inferiors,
isolated from criticism, by nature not less sluggish than others,
through the honorable passion which they feel for their subject
disposed to set the private investigation of it above its exposition,
teachers are continually tempted to think of a class as if it existed
for their sakes rather than they for its. Fasten pupils to the
benches, and nothing counteracts this temptation except that individual
conscience which in all of us is a faculty that will well bear
strengthening. It may be just to condemn the dull, the intolerant, the
self-absorbed teacher; but why not condemn also the system which
perpetuates him? Nobody likes to be inefficient; slackness is largely
a fault of inadvertence. That system is good which makes inadvertence
difficult and opens the way for a teacher to discover whether his
instructions hit. Give students choice, and a professor gets the power
to see himself as others see him.
How this is accomplished appears by examining three possible cases.
Suppose, in the first place, I become negligent this year, am busy with
private affairs, and so content myself with imparting nothing, with
calling off questions from a text-book, or with reading my old lectures;
I shall find out my mistake plainly enough next June, when fewer men
than usual elect my courses. Suppose, secondly, I give my class
important matter, but put it in such a form that young minds cannot
readily assimilate it; the same effect follows, only in this case I
shall probably attract a small company of the hardier spirits,--in some
subjects the very material a teacher desires. Or suppose, lastly, I seek
popularity, aim at entertainment, and give my pupils little work to do;
my elective becomes a kind of sink, into which are drained off the
intellectual dregs of the college. Other teachers will get rid of their
loafers; I shall take them in. But I am not likely to retain them. A
teacher is known by the company he keeps. In a vigorous community a
"soft" elective brings no honor to its founder. I shall be apt to
introduce a little stiffening into my courses each year, till the
appearance of the proper grade of student tells me I am proved to have a
value. There is, therefore, in the new method a self-regulating
adjustment. Teacher and taught are put on their good behavior. A spirit
of faithfulness is infused into both, and by that very fact the
friendliest relation is established between them.
I have left myself little room to explain why the elective system should
be begun as early as the freshman year, and surely not much room is
needed. A system proved to exert a happy influence over character, and
thence over manners and scholarly disposition, is exactly the maturing
agency needed by the freshman of eighteen. It is the better suited to
him because the early years of college life are its least valuable
portion, which can bear, therefore, most economically the disciplining
losses sure to come when a student is learning to choose. More than
this, the change from school methods to character methods is too grave a
one to be passed over as an incident in the transition from year to
year. A change of residence should mark it. It should stand at the
entrance to a new career. Parents should be warned, and those who have
brought up their sons to habits of luxurious ease should be made fully
aware that a college which appeals to character has no place for
children of theirs.
Every mode of training has its exclusions. I prefer the one which brings
least profit to our dangerous classes,--the indolent rich. Leslie
Stephen has said that the only argument rascals can understand is the
hangman. The only inducement to study, for boys of loose early life, is
compulsion. But for the plain democratic many, who have sound seed in
themselves, who have known duty early, and who have found in worthy
things their law and impulse, the elective system, even during the
freshman year, gives an opportunity for moral and mental expansion such
as no compulsory system can afford.
* * * * *
Perhaps in closing I ought to caution the reader that he has been
listening to a description of tendencies merely, and not of completed
attainment. In no college is the New Education fully embodied. It is an
ideal, toward which all are moving, and a powerfully influential ideal.
In explaining it, for the sake of simplicity I have confined myself to
tracing the working of its central principle, and I have drawn my
illustrations from that Harvard life with which I am most familiar. But
simplicity distorts; the shadows disappear. I am afraid I may seem to
have hinted that the Harvard training already comes pretty near
perfection. It does not--let me say so distinctly. We have much to
learn. Side by side with nobler tendencies to which I have directed
attention, disheartening things appear. The examination paper still
attacks learning on its intellectual side, the marking system on its
moral. All I have sought to establish is this: there is a method which
we and many other colleges in different degrees have adopted, which is
demonstrably a sound method. Its soundness should by this time be
generally acknowledged, and criticism should now turn to the important
work of bettering its details of operation. May what I have written
encourage such criticism and help to make it wise, penetrative, and
friendly.
FOOTNOTES: