Part 11

[3] Delivered at the first commencement of the Woman's College of Western Reserve University.

VIII

THE NEW EDUCATION

During the year 1884-85 the freshmen of Harvard College chose a majority of their studies. Up to that time no college, so far as I know, allowed its first year's men any choice whatever. Occasionally, one modern language has been permitted rather than another; and where colleges are organized by "schools,"--that is, with independent groups of studies each leading to a different degree,--the freshman by entering one school turns away from others, and so exercises a kind of selection. But with these possible exceptions, the same studies have always been required of all the members of a given freshman class. Under the new Harvard rules, but seven sixteenths of the work of the freshman year will be prescribed; the entire remainder of the college course, with the exception of a few exercises in English composition, will be elective. A fragment of prescribed work so inconsiderable is likely soon to disappear. At no distant day the Harvard student will mark out for himself his entire curriculum from entrance to graduation.

Even if this probable result should not follow, the present step toward it is too significant to be passed over in silence, for it indicates that after more than half a century of experiment the Harvard Faculty are convinced of the worth of the elective system. In their eyes, option is an engine of efficiency. People generally treat it as a concession. Freedom is confessedly agreeable; restive boys like it; let them have as much as will not harm them. But the Harvard authorities mean much more than this. They have thrown away that established principle of American education, that every head should contain a given kind of knowledge; and having already organized their college from the top almost to the bottom on a wholly different plan, they now declare that their new principle has been proved so safe and effective that it should supplant the older method, even in that year when students are acknowledged to be least capable of self-direction.

On what facts do they build such confidence? What do they mean by calling their elective principle a system? Does not the new method, while rendering education more agreeable, tend to lower its standard? Or, if it succeeds in stimulating technical scholarship, is it equally successful in fostering character and in forming vigorous and law-revering men? These questions I propose to answer, for they are questions which every friend of Harvard, and indeed of American education, wishes people pressingly to ask. Those most likely to ask them are quiet, God-fearing parents, who, having bred their sons to a sense of duty, expect college life to broaden and consolidate the discipline of the home. These are the parents every college wants to reach. Their sons, whether rich or poor, are the bone and sinew of the land. In my judgment the new education, once understood, will appeal to them more strongly than to any other class.

But it is not easy to understand it. My own understanding of it has been of slow growth. When, in 1870, I left Andover Seminary and came to teach at Harvard, I distrusted the more extreme developments of the elective system. Up to 1876 I opposed the introduction of voluntary attendance at recitations. Not until four years ago did I begin to favor the remission of Greek in the requisites for entrance. In all these cases my party was defeated; my fears proved groundless; what I wished to accomplish was effected by means which I had opposed. I am therefore that desirable persuader, the man who has himself been persuaded. The misconceptions through which I passed, I am sure beset others. I want to clear them away, and to present some of the reasons which have turned me from an adherent of the old to an apostle of the new faith.

An elementary misconception deserves a passing word. The new system is not a mere cutting of straps; it is a system. Its student is still under bonds, bonds more compulsive than the old, because fitted with nicer adjustment to each one's person. On H. M. S. Pinafore the desires of every sailor receive instant recognition. The new education will not agree to that. It remains authoritative. It will not subject its student to alien standards, nor treat his deliberate wishes as matters of no consequence; but it does insist on that authority which reveals to a man his own better purposes and makes them firmer and finer than they could have become if directed by himself alone. What the amount of a young man's study shall be, and what its grade of excellence, a body of experts decides. The student himself determines its specific topic.

Everybody knows how far this is from a prescribed system; not so many see that it is at a considerable remove from unregulated or nomadic study. An American at a German university, or at a summer school of languages, applies for no degree and is under no restraint. He chooses whatever studies he likes, ten courses or five or one; he works on them as much as suits his need or his caprice; he submits what he does to no test; he receives no mark; the time he wastes is purely his own concern. Study like this, roving study, is not systematic at all. It is advantageous to adult students,--to those alone whose wills are steady, and who know their own wants precisely. Most colleges draw a sharp distinction between the small but important body of students of this class--special students, as they are called--and the great company of regulars. These latter are candidates for a degree, are under constant inspection, and are moved along the line only as they attain a definite standard in both the quantity and quality of their work. After accomplishing the studies of the freshman year, partly prescribed and partly elective, a Harvard student must pass successfully four elective courses in each of his subsequent three years. By "a course" is understood a single line of study receiving three hours a week of instruction; fifty per cent of a maximum mark must be won in each year in order to pass. Throwing out the freshman year, the precise meaning of the Harvard B.A. degree is therefore this: its holder has presented twelve courses of study selected by himself, and has mastered them at least half perfectly.

Here, then, is the essence of the elective system,--fixed quantity and quality of study, variable topic. Work and moderate excellence are matters within everybody's reach. It is not unfair to demand them of all. If a man cannot show success somewhere, he is stamped _ipso facto_ a worthless fellow. But into the specific topic of work an element of individuality enters. To succeed in a particular branch of study requires fitness, taste, volition,--incalculable factors, known to nobody but the man himself. Here, if anywhere, is the proper field for choice; and all American colleges are now substantially agreed in accepting the elective principle in this sense and applying it within the limits here marked out. It is an error to suppose that election is the hasty "craze" of a single college. Every senior class in New England elects a portion of its studies. Every important New England college allows election in the junior year. Amherst, Bowdoin, Yale, and Harvard allow it in the sophomore. Outside of New England the case is the same. It is true, all the colleges except Harvard retain a modicum of prescribed study even in the senior year; but election in some degree is admitted everywhere, and the tendency is steadily in the direction of a wider choice.

The truth is, Harvard has introduced the principle more slowly than other colleges. She was merely one of the earliest to begin. In 1825, on the recommendation of Judge Story, options were first allowed, in modern languages. Twenty years of experiment followed. In 1846 electives were finally established for seniors and juniors; in 1867 for sophomores; in 1884 for freshmen. But the old method was abandoned so slowly that as late as 1871 some prescribed study remained for seniors, till 1879 for juniors, and till 1884 for sophomores. During this long and unnoticed period, careful comparison was made between the new and old methods. A mass of facts was accumulated, which subsequently rendered possible an extremely rapid adoption of the system by other colleges. Public confidence was tested. Comparing the new Harvard with the old, it is plain enough that a revolution has taken place; but it is a revolution like that in the England of Victoria, wrought not by sudden shock, but quietly, considerately, conservatively, inevitably. Those who have watched the college have approved; the time of transition has been a time of unexampled prosperity. For the last fifteen years the gifts to the University have averaged $250,000 a year. The steady increase in students may be seen at a glance by dividing the last twenty-five years into five-year periods, and noting the average number of undergraduates in each: 1861-65, 423; 1866-70, 477; 1871-75, 657; 1876-80, 808; 1881-85, 873.

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 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.