Education

NOTHING in England has of late been more the object of attack than the most striking and distinctive feature of the English colleges—their endowed fellowships. Our readers are of course aware that in each of the twenty colleges, more or less, that constitute an English university, there exist from a dozen to sixty foundation fellowships filled year by year, as vacancies occur in them, from the ranks of the ablest and most learned of the recent graduates. No duties are required of the successful candidates ; they are supposed in the original theory of the foundation to devote themselves to study and the instruction of their juniors, suppositions which in a very large number of cases in these days are fully true. Those who prefer a more active life than can be led at the university find the income of their fellowship, always something more than £300 a year, a most comfortable support during the early years of the hard struggle to obtain a foothold in the crowded ranks of professional life. One great end that the fellowships have always served has been to assist young men of brains in their rise from poverty to the highest positions in law, the church, and the schools.

But of late years a sect has arisen, devoted more to physical science than anything else, though recruited also from the historians and the classical scholars, which holds that £300 or ,£400 a year for at least seven years, and often much longer, is a heavy price to pay for the kind and amount of learning that a young fellow of four-andtwenty can be credited with possessing, and which preaches the necessity of catting down very largely the rewards paid for past youthful acquisitions, and of devoting the greater part of the revenues of the colleges to the support of mature learning and original research. This movement has found its most complete expression in Mr. Mark Pattison’s Suggestions on Academical Reorganization — a book full of interest and vigor. The present arrangements, however, are too essential to the existing higher education in England, and have too strong a support in tradition, usefulness, and reason, to allow the reformers to hope for much immediate success in their endeavors.

We desire, however, most of all, at the present time not so much to discuss the condition and prospects of the English institution as to notice how in this, our Tudor age of endowment of colleges and schools, the recurrence of the same causes produces the same effects, and how year by year our colleges are welcoming the addition of fellowships and graduate scholarships to their hitherto meagre provision for higher instruction. Until the last few years the American college was made up wholly of two classes, mutually exclusive, the professors and the under-graduate students. The very sharpness of the distinction between them accentuated all their differences : the business of the one body was to teach and govern, too often to govern and teach; the business of the other was to receive so much instruction as would enable them to satisfy the daily recitation and the annual examination ; the very salt of the under-graduate world almost never thought of the possibility or usefulness of mastering subjects in their entirety, or of pursuing any independent study ; by far the greatest part of the better under-graduates was chasing that ignis fatuus of the student world, improvement by “ general reading.” It was almost unknown that any student remained at the seat of learning after attaining his first degree ; the ambitious youth who aspired for new worlds to conquer was forced to exile himself to European universities, where, unless the lucky man could spend several years, a large amount of valuable time was necessarily lost in adjusting himself to his new relations.

The first signs of a better state of things in the higher education appeared, we believe, at New Haven, where distinguished professors, such as Professor Whitney and the late Professor Hadley, collected about them, in connection with the Sheffield School, a small but yearly increasing number of graduate students in philological and scientific studies. With the lapse of years and the completer development of the system of education, the number of professors and students has so greatly increased, that already the graduate students in the Department of Philosophy and Arts number as many as sixty, who are instructed by a faculty of nearly thirty professors. Nor while Yale College has been growing so strong in the higher studies, has Harvard College been backward in this cause ; although, as is right with what is development from within more than imitation, the forms into which education has been cast are dissimilar, being determined by the different traditions and circumstances of the two colleges. At Yale, as all know, the old mixed education is retained, and the under-graduate course serves as a foundation for the higher instruction, which is conveyed in regulated courses of study. Harvard, on the contrary, cutting down the common education to a low limit, has admitted the studies which at Yale are post-graduate into the liberty of under-graduate selection. Each system has its merits, and we esteem it no misfortune for the future of education that our leading colleges, with the same end in view, pursue widely different paths to attain it.

At Harvard College, with the enormous extension of the elective system in the last two or three years, and the proportionate increase in the amount of instruction offered the students (at the present time, we believe, three or four times as much as any one student can avail himself of in his undergraduate course), we find that even in this the second year of the new regulation with regard to the second degree, more than thirty graduates have remained at Cambridge to enjoy more fully the generous provision that the college makes in all departments of higher study ; and most of them indeed are registered as candidates for the newly established doctorate, which requires two full years of post-graduate study.

It is especially noteworthy that by recent endowment the English system of fellowships in a modified form has been introduced into Harvard College, and the opportunities for higher education extended to those young men of ability whose means are otherwise too narrow to allow them to make their training complete. First were founded the Harris Fellowship and the Graduates’ Scholarship ; then Mr. Bancroft set a noble example to other men of letters, by establishing a fellowship for foreign study ; last and best the legacy of Mr. Parker has given the college three fellowships of the annual value of one thousand dollars each. We do not dwell on the opportunity for prolonged education given to those who enjoy these foundations, and desire only to express the hope that by this organization of advanced study something may be done to take away our national reproach — the absence of instructed special students in the various branches of knowledge. Perhaps, however, we may be allowed to call attention to another consequence, in our eyes almost as important as the immediate advantage, but not quite so apparent to those who live apart from a college community. We have already noticed the fact that our colleges are distinguished from the English by marking off the whole body of members into two groups separated by a hard and fast line. The teachers and those under direct instruction make up together the whole college. In England there is no such division possible ; there are under-graduates held to a strict responsibility for the use of their time ; there are older under-graduates who are almost and even sometimes quite freed from obligation ; there are bachelors of arts studying for the fellowships, and often giving instruction to under-graduates ; there are finally the fellows, tutors, and professors, some of whom are completely occupied in the work of instruction, some of whom are wholly given to study and research, the whole constituting, in truth, a building fitly framed together. To break down the wall of partition that unfortunately now exists in our colleges would do as much perhaps as any one thing to bring our students out of the delusion that their work has no permanent value, no relation to life beyond the lecture-room and the examination. The existence of an intermediate class of young students who are yet independent of control, who study in their own way and at their own time for an end they recognize as peculiarly their own, would help strongly to improve the attitude towards study among the under-graduates, and by establishing a medium of connection between the professorial class and the under-graduate, would make impossible that antagonism between the teachers and the taught which is the permanently impending danger in every American college.

— The catalogue of Harvard University for this year informs us of important changes in the requisitions for admission, by which, while the amount to be read in the Latin and Greek authors remains about the same as before, a greater variety is introduced, and a real knowledge of Latin is -to he secured by requiring the candidate to translate at sight a passage of easy Latin prose, not previously read by him ; by which, too, the history of Rome is added, and an elementary training in English composition demanded, together with an acquaintance with a few selections from English standard authors. Next year candidates for admission will also be required to translate at sight either easy French or German prose ; and the year following they will be examined in either elementary botany, the rudiments of physics and chemistry, or the rudiments of physics and of descriptive astronomy, not only a knowledge of a good elementary text-book being required, but an ability in botany to analyze simple specimens, and in physics or chemistry to perform simple experiments.

Harvard College thus wisely, we think, demands additional knowledge and still more additional training. It is very desirable that a young man should be able to read some modern language besides his own, certainly desirable that he should be able to express himself properly in his own, and that he should have read a few of the best works in English as well as in Latin ; important, too, that he should have early paid such attention to some branch of science, as to have trained his faculties in a way other than that given by his other studies.

There may be, however, some question whether the schools are yet prepared to give the education thus demanded of them, but Harvard College by requiring this offers them the most powerful incentive. It must be seen that these stndies, added to the previous requisitions of Latin and Greek grammar, Latin and Greek composition, four books of Cæsar’s Gallic War, Sallust’s Catiline, four thousand lines of Ovid, the Eclogues and six books of the Æneid, eight orations of Cicero, the De Scnectute, the Greek Reader, three books of Homer, arithmetic (including the metric system of weights and measures, and logarithms), algebra, plane geometry, Greek history, ancient, modern, and physical geography, require an extended preparatory course.

In large extents of our country, at least outside of the great cities and the preparatory schools attached to many of the Western colleges, there are no schools that afford good instruction in preparation for college. Harvard College is peculiarly situated. She has always been able to rely on having a considerable proportion ot her students well prepared according to the standard that she has from time to time demanded. The Phillips Academy at Exeter, the Boston Latin School, the private classical schools in Boston, and some high schools in eastern Massachusetts have together sent her every year what would be considered a large class in many of our colleges. Not that these have been the only well-prepared young men, nor indeed that all of these have been well prepared, — many of her highest scholars have not come from these schools or this section,— but she has had from these schools an important part of every class, who have passed successfully and without conditions the examinations that she has set. We believe that these schools will be compelled to meet her requirements, whatever they may be, and that new schools will arise in the richer and more thickly settled parts of our country and in the large cities, the chief aim of which will be to prepare boys for the most advanced college education. But if Harvard College holds her candidates to a full knowledge of all these subjects, she will either receive a smaller number at first than she has for a few years past, or a comparatively few schools will, for the present, fit the greater part of her pupils. Many of the schools have been taxed to their utmost already in meeting her demands. None the less do we believe that she is thus doing a good service to education. Every year the schools will increase the quantity and quality of their work, and as her standard is met, the students at the other colleges will be also better prepared.

But this is not all that Harvard College is doing for the advancement of the standard of education in the upper schools. By her scheme of additional examinations in both the classics and mathematics, which those who wish to attain distinction “ are advised to pass on entering,” she offers to the schools an opportunity of extending for their best pupils very materially the course of preparatory studies, and to the students more advanced and additional studies in the college itself.

Now, we think that the hopes of the friends of university education, and the ambition of Harvard, as manifested in these requisitions, can be realized only on the condition that no part of the time allotted in boyhood to education is wasted. A young man of ability can, by seventeen or eighteen years of age, reach up to the full requirements of even the additional examinations on entering college, provided his education has been thorough, systematic, and continuous. But we fear that just here will be found the chief obstacle in the way of this attempt.

Hitherto the course of instruction at the academies has been short—at Exeter, Andover, and elsewhere, only three years. To meet the required examinations heretofore has compelled hard work during these years, and quite a large percentage of the pupils have been found unable or unwilling to apply themselves with sufficient energy to remain during the academic course. Indeed, the academy at Exeter, which has been of so much service to liberal education in our country, and whose record in scholarship has been so brilliant, has had the credit of producing the result in part by somewhat remorselessly cutting off its idlers and drones. Now this course of study must be lengthened — certainly, if the additional examinations are to be met, must be materially lengthened ; but the time should be added to the beginning rather than to the end of the course; in other words, the special preparation for college must begin at an earlier age than is now usual, or there mast be some way by which the course of study in the lower schools can be a systematic preparation for the higher. It is not desirable that the time of entering college should be any later. If the boy can be at the age of thirteen or fourteen thoroughly prepared in his arithmetic, geography, and spelling, if in addition to these he has been taught, as he verv well may be, the elements of botany, and is already able to read easy French, he can be fitted in four years’ additional time, if of good ability and industry, for the most advanced examination that any college is likely to propose. But it is in every teacher’s experience that boys of thirteen or fourteen are in general very far from being prepared in these branches of study. The Dean of Harvard College, in this year’s report, thinks that as soon as the leading colleges “ unite in demanding of candidates for admission a thoroughly good training in English no less than in classical subjects, the schools which feed the colleges will in turn be able to exact from lower schools an efficiency which they now greatly lack.” What the probabilities are that the schools which feed the colleges will be able to exact this efficiency from the lower schools, we may hereafter consider. It would be, however, leaving our present words incomplete, should we not say that it must be borne in mind that very few of the pupils of these lower schools ever enter those of a higher grade, and that the object of the grammar or district schools is quite different from that of forming one of a series of steps of which the highest shall be the university.

We should deem it probable that those schools whose special work is that of immediate preparation for college would find it serviceable to in some way attach to them schools preparatory to their own work. Indeed, this process seems to have already begun. The Boston Latin School, whose course was a few years ago greatly enlarged, has added, or is about to add, what will be substantially a preparatory class. Exeter prefixes to her course this year such a class. This enables her to add French and the new requirements in English to her list of studies. The new Adams Academy at Quincy, that opened a year and a half ago with a four years’ course intended to prepare her ablest pupils fbr the advanced examination at Cambridge, but without the study of French, has this year found it expedient to form a class “ in studies preparatory to the academy, comprising a thorough training in the elementary English branches, together with French, botany, and drawing,” and adds French also to the regular course in the academy. We do not know whether Andover has adopted the same method, but she has already her English department, long established and successful, and would only find it necessary to require study there before entering upon the classical side.

There are disadvantages connected with this plan, the most obvious of which is the necessity of sending boys away from home at so early an age. It would be better for the home schools to do this part of the work if they could. The full course at the German gymnasia is nine years, and we may be sure that we cannot, any more than the Germans, complete a full and extended course of study — cannot reach high attainments — without systematic and long attention, nor without being willing to make for ourselves and our children the needful saorifices.

— Very important educational improvements have been in progress in several European countries during the past fiveand-twenty years, of which little seems to be known in this country. Thirty years ago or more, Horace Mann, and Professors Stowe and Bache, in their reports on foreign education, described the Prussian schools, and thereby did much to stimulate educational progress in America, But those publications, which did not aim at completeness, are now quite obsolete. Mr. Mann, for instance, set forth in imposing array, with much rhetorical embellishment, the provisions which had been made in different countries, especially in Prussia, for training teachers in normal schools. But his glowing enumeration is insignificant by the side of the present normal-school statistics of the same countries.

A small pamphlet in German, now before us, affords fresh and authentic information, of the most interesting and valuable description, about Prussian common-school education as it exists at the present time. It comprises the revised and improved programme of studies prescribed by the government, together with the detailed requirements for the normal training and the examination of teachers. What makes this little brochure extremely noteworthy is the fact that it is the last word on the subject, from the most, competent pedagogists or schoolmen in the world. It is evidently a complete whole, a harmonious system, where each perfect detail is blended in the general excellence. It contains a clear and precise statement of the aims and requirements in respect to each subject of instruction. The time to be devoted to each branch is also prescribed. The following studies are obligatory for all children; religion, the mother-tongue including writing and grammar, arithmetic, practical elementary geometry, realien (comprisinggeography, history, the elements of natural history, and the rudiments of physics), drawing, singing, gymnastics, and, for girls, needlework. To each of the last four branches the pupils of the upper classes are required to give two hours weekly. In giving the gymnastic exercises, the teachers must follow the course laid down in the official manual prepared for the purpose.

To the average American teacher, the above schedule of studies will probably appear rather formidable ; and most likely it will not be apparent to him how time is to be found to teach them all to any purpose, in the period allotted for the course of instruction in the common school. But the Prussian teachers, it is said, do find time for this, without subjecting their pupils to the “ cramming ” process, or to what we call “ high pressure.” Nor is it very difficult to discover how the Prussian teachers are enabled to do what seems to most American teachers impracticable. This programme throws much light on the subject. In the first place, it distinctly indicates what is to be accomplished, and puts just and reasonable limitations upon the requirements. And so the Prusssian teacher does not fritter away the time of his pupils in attempting to teach them a great mass of useless details which book makers have seen fit to print in text-books. But this is just what most American teachers are doing to an immense extent, greatly to the profit of book makers and book publishers, and at the same time to the great detriment of their pupils. And how can they be expected to do otherwise ? No such a teacher’s guide as this before us has been furnished by any American State. In the Massachusetts school-law the subjects to be taught are named, and nothing more. It is so in all the States, or in nearly all. The consequence is, the teachers are very generally left by the local authorities to teach what there is in the prescribed text-books. There are exceptions to this state of things, we are aware, in many of the city schools where there is an efficient superintendence exercised by the school boards and their experienced officers. In New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and some other cities, programmes have been adopted which are intended to secure a rational and economical handling of the subjects to be taught. But nowhere is this intention satisfactorily realized. And speaking generally, it is substantially correct to say that the American teacher has for his guide, instead of a carefully prepared, rational programme, a list of prescribed text-books, too numerous and too voluminous by half, the contents of which he is expected to teach his pupils as best he can. He knows very well, from experience, that whatever else his pupils may be expected to know, they must not fail to answer any questions on the text of the prescribed books, so far as they have been studied. Hence of necessity his chief business must consist in giving out lessons and in hearing recitations. In fact, the characteristic of American teaching, in all its grades, is that it consists mainly of the hearing of recitations from text-books. The Prussian method is totally different. The Prussian teacher teaches his pupils and works with them. The text-book is used only for reference, and as an aid to the pupils in preparing reviews. In this way the Prussian, teacher makes very short work of geography, on which our American teachers feel compelled to waste a great amount of time, and so must crowd out drawing or singing.

But this pamphlet not only indicates the right way of handling the subjects of instruction; it shows also how the teachers are prepared for this sort of work. A perfect programme is a most useful instrument in skilled hands, but it is only so much waste paper in unskilled hands. The Prussian ministry of instruction is by no means content simply to put forth a well-contrived course of study, and then tell the local authorities to carry it out. It prescribes, at the same time, the course of culture and technical training for the teachers, to enable them to handle the programme according to its letter and spirit. And what is more to the point, it provides in abundance the institutions in which this culture is imparted. Prussia was the first country in the world to set the example of establishing normal schools, the earliest of these institutions dating back as far as 1701. In 1819 it was decreed that ten should be established, one in each province. Now there are eighty-eight. In the whole German Empire there are one hundred and forty-three. And the course of training in these professional schools varies from three to six years.

If this pamphlet which we have taken as our topic could be translated and printed, and distributed largely throughout America, it could not fail to render an important service to the cause of popular education.