little disposed to intentionally vicious choices. My fears look in a
different direction. I do not expect depravity, but I want to head off
aimless trifling. I agree with the opponents of election in thinking
that there is danger, especially during the early years of college life,
that righteous intention may not be distinct and energetic. Boys drift.
Inadequate influences induce their decisions. The inclinations of the
clique in which a young man finds himself are, without much thought,
accepted as his own. Heedlessness is the young man's bane. It should not
be mistaken for vice; the two are different. A boy who will enter a
dormitory at twelve o'clock at night, and go to the third story
whistling and beating time on the banisters, certainly seems a brutish
person; but he is ordinarily a kind enough fellow, capable of a good
deal of self-sacrifice when brought face to face with need. He simply
does not think. So it is in study: there, too, he does not think. Now in
college a boy should learn perpetually to think; and an excellent way of
helping him to learn is to ask him often what he is thinking about. The
object of the questioning should not be to thwart the boy's aims, rather
to insure that they are in reality his own. Essentially his to the last
they should remain, even though intrinsically they may not be the best.
Young persons, much more than their elders, require to talk over plans
from time to time with an experienced critic, in order to learn by
degrees the difficult art of planning. By such talk intentionality is
fortified. There is much of this talk already; talk of younger students
with older, talk with wise persons at home, and more and more every
year with the teachers of the courses left and the courses entered. All
this is good. Haphazard modes breed an astonishing average of choices
that possess a meaning. The waste of a _laissez-faire_ system comes
nowhere near the waste of a prescribed. But what is good when compared
with a bad thing may be poor when compared with excellence itself. We
must go on. A college, like a man, should always be saying, "Never was I
so good as to-day, and never again will I be so bad." We must welcome
criticisms more than praises, and seek after our weak points as after
hid treasures. The elective system seems to me weak at present through
lacking organized means of bringing the student and his intentions face
to face. Intentions grow by being looked at. At the English universities
a young man on entering a college is put in charge of a special tutor,
without whose consent he can do little either in the way of study or of
personal management.[9] Dependence so extreme is perhaps better suited
to an infant school than to an American college; and even in England,
where respectful subservience on the part of the young has been
cultivated for generations, the system is losing ground. Since the
tutors were allowed to marry and to leave the college home, tutorial
influence has been changing. In most American colleges twenty-five years
ago there were officers known as class tutors, to whom, in case of need,
a student might turn. Petty permissions were received from these men,
instead of from a mechanical central office. So far as this plan set
personal supervision in the place of routine it was, in my eyes, good.
But the relation of a class tutor to his boys was usually one of more
awe than friendship. At the Johns Hopkins University there is a board of
advisers, to some member of which each student is assigned at entrance.
The adviser stands _in loco parentis_ to his charges. The value of such
adjustments depends on the nature of the parental tie. If the relation
is worked so as to stimulate the student's independence, it is good; if
so as to discharge him from responsibility, it unfits for the life that
follows. At Harvard special students not candidates for a degree have
recently been put in charge of a committee, to whom they are obliged to
report their previous history and their plans of study for each
succeeding year. The committee must know at all times what their charges
are doing. Something of this sort, I am convinced, will be demanded at
no distant day, as a means of steadying all students in elective
colleges. Large personal supervision need not mean diminution of
freedom. A young man may possess his freedom more solidly if he
recognizes an obligation to state and defend the reasons which induce
his choice. For myself, I should be willing to make the functions of
such advisory committees somewhat broad. As a college grows, the old
ways of bringing about acquaintance between officers and students become
impracticable. But the need of personal acquaintance, unhappily, does
not cease. New ways should be provided. A boy dropped into the middle of
a large college must not be lost to sight; he must be looked after. To
allow the teacher's work of instruction to become divorced from his
pastoral, his priestly, function is to cheapen and externalize
education. I would have every student in college supplied with somebody
who might serve as a discretionary friend; and I should not think it a
disadvantage that such an expectation of friendship would be as apt to
better the instructor as the student.
Before leaving this part of my subject, I may mention a subordinate, but
still valuable, means of limiting choice so as to increase its
intentionality. The studies open to choice in the early years should be
few and elementary. The significance of advanced courses cannot be
understood till elementary ones are mastered, and immature choice should
not be confused by many issues. At Harvard this mode of limitation is
largely employed. Although the elective list for 1886-87 shows 172
courses, a freshman has hardly more than one eighth of these to choose
from; in any given case this number will probably be reduced about one
half by insufficient preparation or conflict of hours. Seemingly about a
third of the list is offered to the average sophomore; but this amount
is again cut down nearly one half by the operation of similar causes.
The practice of hedging electives with qualifications is a growing one.
It may well grow more. It offers guidance precisely at the point where
it is most needed. It protects rational choice, and guards against many
of the dangers which the foes of election justly dread.
II. A second class of limitations of the elective system, possible and
friendly, springs from the need of furnishing the young elector ample
information about that which he is to choose. The best intentions
require judicious aim. If studies are taken in the dark, without right
anticipation of their subject-matter, or in ignorance of their relation
to other studies, small results follow. Here, I think it will be
generally agreed, prescribed systems are especially weak. Their pupils
have little knowledge beforehand of what a course is designed to
accomplish. Work is undertaken blindly, minds consenting as little as
wills. An elective system is impossible under such conditions. Its
student must know when he chooses, what he chooses. He must be able to
estimate whether the choice of Greek 5 will further his designs better
than the choice of Greek 8.
At Harvard, methods of furnishing information are pretty fully
developed. In May an elective pamphlet is issued, which announces
everything that is to be taught in the college during the following
year. Most departments, also, issue additional pamphlets, describing
with much detail the nature of their special courses, and the
considerations which should lead a student to one rather than
another. If the courses of a department are arranged properly, pursuing
one gives the most needful knowledge about the available next. This
knowledge is generally supplemented at the close of the year by
explanations on the part of the instructor about the courses that
follow. In the Elective Pamphlet a star, prefixed to courses of an
advanced and especially technical character, indicates that the
instructor must be privately consulted before these courses can be
chosen. Consultations with instructors about all courses are frequent.
That most effective means of distributing information, the talk of
students, goes on unceasingly. With time, perhaps, means may be devised
for informing a student more largely what he is choosing. The fullest
information is desirable. That which is at present most needed is, I
think, some rough indication of the relations of the several provinces
of study to one another. Information of this sort is peculiarly hard
to supply, because the knowledge on which it professes to rest cannot
be precise and unimpeachable. We deal here with intricate problems,
in regard to which experts are far from agreed, problems where the
different point of view provided in the nature of each individual
will rightly readjust whatever general conclusions are drawn. The old
type of college had an easy way of settling these troublesome matters
dogmatically, by voting, in open faculty-meeting, what should be
counted the normal sequence of studies, and what their mixture. But
as the votes of different colleges showed no uniformity, people have
gradually come to perceive that the subject is one where only large
outlines can distinctly be made out.[10] To these large outlines I
think it important to direct the attention of undergraduates. In most
German universities a course of _Encyclopaedie_ is offered, a course
which gives in brief a survey of the sciences, and attempts to fix
approximately the place of each in the total organization of knowledge.
I am not aware that such a course exists in any American college.
Indeed, there was hardly a place for it till dogmatic prescription
was shaken. But if something of the kind were now established in the
freshman year, our young men might be relieved of a certain intellectual
short-sightedness, and the choices of one year might better keep in
view those of the other three.
III. And now granting that a student has started with good intentions
and is well informed about the direction where profit lies, still
have we any assurance that he will push those intentions with a fair
degree of tenacity through the distractions which beset his daily path?
We need, indeed we must have, a third class of helpful limitations
which may secure the persistent adhesion of our student to his chosen
line of work. Probably this class of limitations is the most
important and complex of all. To yield a paying return, study must
be stuck to. A decision has little meaning unless the volition of
to-day brings in its train a volition to-morrow. Self-direction
implies such patient continuance in well-doing that only after
persistence has become somewhat habitual can choice be called mature. To
establish onward-leading habits, therefore, should be one of the
chief objects in devising limitations of election. Only we must not
mistake; we must look below the surface. Mechanical diligence often
covers mental sloth. It is not habits of passive docility that are
desirable, habits of timidity and uncriticising acceptance. Against
forming these pernicious and easily acquired habits, it may be necessary
even to erect barriers. The habit wanted is the habit of spontaneous
attack. Prescription deadened this vital habit; it mechanized. His
task removed, the student had little independent momentum. Election
invigorates the springs of action. Formerly I did not see this, and I
favored prescribed systems, thinking them systems of duty. That
absence of an aggressive intellectual life which prescribed studies
induce, I, like many others, mistook for faithfulness. Experience
has instructed me. I no longer have any question that for the
average man sound habits of steady endeavor grow best in fields of
choice. Emerson's words are words of soberness:--
He that worketh high and wise
Nor pauses in his plan,
Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man.
Furthermore, in attempting to stimulate persistence I believe we must
ultimately rely on the rational interest in study which we can arouse
and hold. Undoubtedly much can be done to save this interest from
disturbance and to hold vacillating attention fixed upon it; but it, and
it alone, is to be the driving force. Methods of college government must
be reckoned wise as they push into the foreground the intrinsic charm of
wisdom, mischievous as they hide it behind fidelity to technical demand.
In other matters we readily acknowledge interest as an efficient force.
We call it a force as broad as the worth of knowledge, and as deep as
the curiosity of man. "Put your heart into your work," we say, "if you
will make it excellent." A dozen proverbs tell that it is love that
makes the world go round. Every employment of life springs from an
underlying desire. The cricketer wants to win the game; the fisherman to
catch fish; the farmer to gather crops; the merchant to make money; the
physician to cure his patient; the student to become wise. Eliminate
desire, put in its place allegiance to the rules of a game, and what, in
any of these cases, would be the chance of persistent endeavor? It seems
almost a truism to say that limitations of personal effort designed to
strengthen persistency must be such as will heighten the wish and clear
its path to its object.
Obvious as is the truth here presented, it seems in some degree to have
escaped the attention of my critics. After showing that the grade of
scholarship at Harvard steadily rises, that our students become more
decorous and their methods of work less childish, I stated that, under
an extremely loose mode of regulating attendance five sixths of the
exercises were attended by all our men, worst and best, sick and well,
most reckless and most discreet. Few portions of my obnoxious paper have
occasioned a louder outcry. I am told of a neighboring college where the
benches show but three per cent of absentees. I wonder what the
percentage is in Charlestown State Prison. Nobody doubts that attendance
will be closer if compelled. But the interesting question still remains,
"Are students by such means learning habits of spontaneous regularity?"
This question can be answered only when the concealing restraint is
removed. It has been removed at Harvard,--in my judgment too largely
removed,--and the great body of our students is seen to desire learning
and to desire it all the time. Is it certain that the students of other
colleges, if left with little or no restraint, would show a better
record? The point of fidelity and regularity, it is said, is of supreme
importance. So it is. But fidelity and regularity in study, not in
attending recitations. If ever the Harvard system is perfected, so that
students here are as eager for knowledge as the best class of German
university men, I do not believe we shall see a lower rate of absence;
only then, each absence will be used, as it is not at present, for a
studious purpose. The modern teacher stimulates private reading, exacts
theses, directs work in libraries. Pupils engaged in these things are
not dependent on recitations as text-book schoolboys are. The grade of
higher education cannot rise much so long as the present extreme stress
is laid on appearance in the class-room.
In saying this I would not be understood to defend the method of dealing
with absences which has for some years been practised at Harvard. I
think the method bad. I have always thought it so, and have steadily
favored a different system. The behavior of our students under a
regulation so loose seems to me a striking testimony to the scholarly
spirit prevalent here. As such I mentioned it in my first paper, and as
such I would again call attention to it. But I am not satisfied with the
present good results. I want to impress on every student that absence
from the class-room can be justified by nothing short of illness or a
scholarly purpose. For a gainful purpose the merchant is occasionally
absent from his office; for a gainful purpose a scholar of mine may omit
a recitation. But Smith can be absent profitably when Brown would meet
with loss. I accordingly object to methods of limiting absence which
exact the same numerical regularity of all. College records may look
clean, yet students be learning little about duty. Limitation, in my
judgment, should be so adjusted as to strengthen the man's personal
adhesion to plans of daily study. Such limitations cannot be fixed by
statute and worked by a single clerk. Moral discipline is not a thing to
be supplied by wholesale. Professors must be individually charged with
the oversight of their men. I would have excuses for occasional absence
made to the instructor, and I should expect him to count it a part of
his work to see that the better purposes of his scholars did not grow
feeble. A professor who exercised such supervisory power slackly would
make his course the resort of the indolent; one who was over-stringent
would see himself deserted by indolent and earnest alike. My rule would
be that no student be allowed to present himself at an examination who
could not show his teacher's certificate that his attendance on daily
work was satisfactory. Traditions in this country and in Germany are so
different that I should have confidence in a method working well here
though it worked ill there. At any rate, whenever it fell into decay, it
could--a proviso necessary in all moral matters--be readjusted. A rule
something like this the Harvard Faculty has recently adopted by voting
that "any instructor, with the approval of the Dean, may at any time
exclude from his course any student who in his judgment has neglected
the work of the course." Probably the amount of absence which has
hitherto occurred at Harvard will under this vote diminish.
Suppose, then, by these limitations on a student's caprice we have
secured his persistence in outward endeavor, still one thing more is
needed. We have brought him bodily to a recitation room; but his mind
must be there too, his aroused and active mind. Limitations that will
secure this slippery part of the person are difficult to devise.
Nevertheless, they are worth studying. Their object is plain. They are
to lead a student to do something every day; to aid him to overcome
those tendencies to procrastination, self-confidence, and passive
absorption which are the regular and calculable dangers of youth. They
are to teach him how not to cram, to inspire him with respect for steady
effort, and to enable him each year to find such effort more habitual to
himself. These are hard tasks. The old education tried to meet them by
the use of daily recitations, a plan not without advantages. The new
education is preserving the valuable features of recitations by adopting
and developing the _Seminar_. But recitations pure and simple have
serious drawbacks. They presuppose a text-book, which, while it brings
definiteness, brings also narrowness of view. The learner masters a
book, not a subject. After-life possesses nothing analogous to the
text-book. A struggling man wins what he wants from many books, from his
own thought, from frequent consultations. Why should not a student be
disciplined in the ways he must afterwards employ? Moreover, recitations
have the disadvantage that no large number of men can take part on any
single day. The times of trial either become amenable to reckoning, or,
in order to prevent reckoning, a teacher must resort to schemes which do
not commend him to his class. Undoubtedly in recitation the reciter
gains, but the gains of the rest of the class are small. The listeners
would be more profited by instruction. An hour with an expert should
carry students forward; to occupy it in ascertaining where they now
stand is wasteful. For all these reasons there has been of late years a
strong reaction against recitations. Lectures have been introduced, and
the time formerly spent by a professor in hearing boys is now spent by
boys in hearing a professor. Plainly in this there is a gain, but a gain
which needs careful limitation if the student's persistence in work is
to be retained. A pure lecture system is a broad road to ignorance.
Students are entertained or bored, but at the end of a month they know
little more than at the beginning. Lectures always seem to me an
inheritance from the days when books were not. Learning--how often must
it be said!--is not acceptance; it is criticism, it is attack, it is
doing. An active element is everywhere involved in it. Personal sanction
is wanted for every step. One who will grow wise must perform processes
himself, not sit at ease and behold another's performance.
These simple truths are now tolerably understood at Harvard. There
remain in the college few courses of pure recitations or of pure
lectures. I wish all were forbidden by statute. In almost all courses,
in one way or another, frequent opportunity is given the student to show
what he is doing. In some, especially in elementary courses, lectures
run parallel with a text-book. In some, theses, that is, written
discussions, are exacted monthly, half-yearly, annually, in addition to
examinations. In some, examinations are frequent. In some, a daily
question, to be answered in writing on the spot, is offered to the whole
class. Often, especially in philosophical subjects, the hour is occupied
with debate between officer and students. More and more, physical
subjects are taught by the laboratory, linguistic and historical by the
library. In a living university a great variety of methods spring up,
according to the nature of the subject and the personality of the
teacher. Variety should exist. In constantly diversified ways each
student should be assured that he is expected to be doing something all
the time, and that somebody besides himself knows what he is doing. As
yet this assurance is not attained; we can only claim to be working
toward it. Every year we discover some fresh limitation which will make
persistence more natural, neglect more strange. I believe study at
Harvard is to-day more interested, energetic, and persistent than it has
ever been before. But that is no ground for satisfaction. A powerful
college must forever be dissatisfied. Each year it must address itself
anew to strengthening the tenacity of its students in their zeal for
knowledge.
By the side of these larger limitations in the interest of persistency,
it may be well to mention one or two examples of smaller ones which have
the same end in view. By some provision it must be made difficult to
withdraw from a study once chosen. Choice should be deliberate and then
be final. It probably will not be deliberate unless it is understood to
be final. A few weeks may be allowed for an inspection of a chosen
course, but at the close of the first month's teaching the Harvard
Faculty tie up their students and allow change only on petition and for
the most convincing cause. An elective college which did not make
changes of electives difficult would be an engine for discouraging
intentionality and persistence.
I incline to think, too, that a regulation forbidding elementary courses
in the later years would render our education more coherent. In this
matter elective colleges have an opportunity which prescribed ones
miss. In order to be fair to all the sciences, college faculties are
obliged to scatter fragments of them throughout the length and breadth
of prescribed curricula. Twenty-five years ago every Harvard man waited
till his senior year before beginning philosophy, acoustics, history,
and political economy. To-day the fourteen other New England colleges,
most of whom, like the Harvard of twenty-five years ago, offer a certain
number of elective studies, still show senior years largely occupied
with elementary studies. Five forbid philosophy before the senior year;
eight, political economy; two, history; six, geology. Out of the seven
colleges which offer some one of the eastern languages, all except
Harvard oblige the alphabet to be learned in the senior year. Of the six
which offer Italian or Spanish, Harvard alone permits a beginning to be
made before the junior year, while two take up these languages for the
first time in the senior year. In three New England colleges German
cannot be begun till the junior year. In a majority, a physical subject
is begun in the junior and another in the senior year. At Yale nobody
but a senior can study chemistry. Such postponement, and by consequence
such fragmentary work, may be necessary where early college years are
crowded with prescribed studies. But an elective system can employ its
later years to better advantage. It can bring to a mature understanding
the interests which freshmen and sophomores have already acquired.
Elementary studies are not maturing studies; they do not make the fibre
of a student firm. To studies of a solidifying sort the last years
should be devoted. I should like to forbid seniors to take any
elementary study whatever, and to forbid juniors all except philosophy,
political economy, history, fine arts, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and law. Under
such a rule we should graduate more men who would be first rate at
something; and a man who is first rate at something is generally pretty
good at anything.