The New York herald., 1868-08-27
College Con,mencements.

4
AT this season Of the year most Of our col.
lege commencement" occur, and the news
papers are giving many detailed accounts o
these academic festivities, which are particu-
larly interesting to collegians themselves and
TO their relatives and friends. Nor have these
festivities entirely lost their claims on the in
terest of the general public, although the time
has gone by when Commencement Day at Har-
ward suspended ordinary business in Boston
and all its adjacent villages, and when the So
called educated class in the community de-
pended almost entirely for its recruits upon
college graduates. At present not few OF
the active and influential minds in that class
have been disciplined and stored elsewhere
than within college walls.
| 1t is true that our systems of collegiate edu-
cation have been greatly improved during the
last quarter of century. 1t is beginning to
be recognized that the multiplication Of little
'one-horse colleges" is an evil rather than an
advantage, and there now exists growing
tendency to consolidate into fewer and more
richly endowed institutions, more nearly ap-
|
the forces that used to be weakened by being
scattered. Especially it is now acknowledged
that the spirit and the necessities of the age
require an extension of the old-fashioned curri-
culum. While the study of the Greek and
Latin languages and literature may now
be pursued with all the appliances afforded
by the latest improvements in European
scholarship, the modern languages and
literatures are no longer neglected, and
comparative philology has at once sup
plemented and stimulated the study Of
Greek and Latin. What is still more
important, it has been found indispensable
to make increased provision for supplying the
demand for instruction in the applications of
mathematical and natural science to the useful
arts. Nearly all our principal colleges now
embrace scientific schools as well as academic
departments and schools Of law, medicine and
theology The Lawrence Scientific School at
Harvard the Sheffield Scientific School at
Yale, the School of Mines at Columbia, and
many similar foundations, attest a growing
sense Of the necessity of developing more
fully than ever the department of philosophy
and the arts in our American colleges. In
several of these colleges certain features of
the enlightened and practical plan of educa-
ton devised by Mr. Jefferson for the Univer-
sity of Virginia have been adopted. DR.. NAL
let, in his recent inaugural lecture on "Chem-
istry Applied to the Arts" delivered when he
took his chair as Professor of Analytical and
Applied Chemistry at the University of Vir-
ginia), eloquently refuted the objections which
are sometimes urged against the modern ten
dency to embody the study Of natural science
in the system of university education, and con-
clusively proved how desirable it is that ap-
piled science should constitute branch of
public education Of the higher grade. In the
United States and in England the value of ap-
piled science and of scientific training for those
who are to engage in industrial pursuits begins
to be recognized, as it long has been recog-
nized in France, in Prussia, in Austria, in
Holland, Belgium, Saxony and Switzerland
and in Russia. BY yielding still more to the
modern tendency towards development of
the scientific department in our institutions of
learning our colleges will become wOrthier of
their claim to be luminous centres Of education
and intelligence.
But all the intellectual reforms which we
might suggest as desirable in our colleges are
less urgent than the radical reform which is
needed in them to secure such moral discipline
and culture as shall prevent the recurrence of
scenes so disgraceful as those that accom-
panied the recent regatta at Worcester. On
that deplorabe occasion the students of Har-
ward and Yale unconsciously bore witness to
the plentiful lack Of wholesome influences over
their morals and their manners. The gradu-
ates and undergraduates of the Five Points in
New York could not have displayed more
finished specimens of rowdyism. The fact is
that the medieval custom of shutting up q
community Of hot-headed youths in college
cloisters and thus segregating them from civil
lied social and family life is highly unfavor-
able. The barbarous instances Of sshazing"
younger students which were lately published,
as well As the acts Of rowdyism annually in
dulged In at Worcester by the students of
Harvard and Yale, reflect no credit on these
college-bred, or rather ill-bred, men or on
their respective colleges Let us hope that
the unqualified sentence of condemnation
passed upon them by the public may lead
them to mend both their morals and their
manners.