< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu
This page has been validated.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

695

Princeton because it happens to have furnished us with a text; but these strictures have a wider application, for the vice we are condemning vitiates the college system of the country. There may have been excuse for this in institutions founded long before the claims of modern knowledge had anything like their present urgency; but the later colleges exhibit the same defects. The University of Michigan, for example, is of modern origin, having been established nearly a hundred years later than the College of New Jersey, but its educational spirit is of the same kind. It was organized by State authority, and has been maintained from the beginning by public taxes. It is open to all within the State or out, and, excepting a slight initiation fee, is free to every student. One would think that the circumstances were here favorable for giving precedence to that later, higher, and more perfect knowledge which is vindicated in its beneficent uses, and is equally valuable to all classes. Yet this great institution, with its fourteen hundred students, seems just as much enslaved by vicious traditions as the older schools. Middle-age studies are still in the ascendant, as "three years in Greek required for A. B." sufficiently attests. The sciences are taught there, but the classical course is the one encouraged by the whole weight of the university influence; and, consequently, as statistics show, it is the one pursued by an excessive majority of the students. The theory of education which bore its fatal fruit at Princeton is loudly defended at Ann Arbor. A newspaper comes to us with report of the proceedings of the last commencement, held July 1st. These are grand occasions, when the colleges are sure of public attention. A vast audience gathered at this thirty-sixth annual commencement of the Michigan University, but, in place of the usual speeches by the graduating students, an elaborate address was delivered by the Right Rev. Samuel T. Harris, D. D., Bishop of Michigan. The eloquent speaker did not fail to improve the occasion in the interest of all collegiate traditions. Knowing that they are under indictment by the common sense of the age, he came to their defense with a kind of fanatical desperation. The Bishop said:

Scarcely less cruel is the introduction of a false utilitarianism into education. In education the usefulness of a study is not to be measured by its availability for the business purposes of later life. In education those things are useful, not which may be employed thereafter for business purposes, but which best develop and train the student's faculties and powers. Until education is completed, no student ought ever to be permitted to study anything simply because he proposes to make money by it. It is not the object of education to learn useful things, but to become able to learn and use them. So I say it is a cruel wrong to the student to permit either the instruments or the spirit of mere moneymaking to be introduced into his educational life. Permit me to say that this is a great evil of which I am now speaking. In too many cases education is dwarfed and perverted by the tendency to yield to this false utilitarianism. In too many cases allurements of worldliness and mammon are allowed to call our ingenuous youth away from the proper objects of education. In too many cases short roads and by-paths are opened up to tempt them away from the proper work of the college and the university, and so to send them prematurely to schools of professional and technical instruction. The result is, that too often we see half-educated men and unformed men sent forth to plead the cases and heal the diseases and lead the thinking of the age. Let us all protest against this evil tendency. For, unless we succeed in checking it in some way, it will lead to the impoverishment of this generation. Let our schools and our colleges and universities make men first, and then let them make lawyers and physicians and teachers. Ordinarily, so far as education is concerned—and we are confining our discussion to that now—the only path to true completed manhood is through a thorough course of educational training. Latin and Greek and the higher mathematics, rhetoric and logic and mental and moral philosophy, these are the useful studies in education. These are the studies by which such men as Newton and Bacon and Stevenson and Butler
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.