Part 6 (1/2)
These facts are sufficient to show that Harvard has reached her 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 const.i.tuted 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 apt.i.tudes, and to stake intellectual gains upon them. In a.s.sessing 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 pa.s.sed 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 enn.o.bles 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 ma.s.s 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 att.i.tude. 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 a.s.sure 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-smas.h.i.+ng, 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 cla.s.s 91 men out of 191 received Honorable Mention. This last fact shows that a decent scholars.h.i.+p has become reputable. But more than this is true: the rank which is reckoned decent scholars.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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_ a.s.sumption 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 cla.s.ses 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 const.i.tutional history of the United States, 56; psychology, 52; geology, 47; const.i.tutional 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 cla.s.ses 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 soph.o.m.ore 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, a.s.syrian, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 cla.s.smates, 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 s.h.i.+ftless 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 cla.s.ses who stand in greatest need of protection. What I would a.s.sert, 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.
n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+rks. 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 ign.o.ble 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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sion 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 cla.s.s 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? n.o.body 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. .h.i.t. 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 cla.s.s important matter, but put it in such a form that young minds cannot readily a.s.similate 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.ses,--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.