The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-26
THE NEW EDUCATION.
From the N. Y. Tribune.

From the ~ y. Tribune.
The annual burden of commencement re-
ports pressing once more upon our columns,
will hardly be received this year with the
familiar ridicule of college education with
which, every twelvemonth, a certain class of
reformers used to stir the ire of venerable
dons and callow graduates. When the young
gentlemen who had spent four years in the
society of Horace, Euripides, and Euclid,
learned all about Greek roots and accidents,
and acquired more or less intimacy with
boating, tobacco, and the higher mathe-
matics, came upon the platform on Com
mencement day, to salute their assembled
friends in language those friends could
not understand and to declaim q few
rhetorical commonplaces on lofty themes
of criticism and philosophy, it was SO easy to
doubt whether the requirements thus exhi-
bited were really of much use in this busy
practical world that the friends of classical
education began to fear for the destruction of
all liberal culture in the clamor of the utilita-
rian school which the summer commence
ments never failed to excite. And indeed the
criticism. They fell into the mistake
of believing that the liberal culture
which suficed to adorn one century
was broad enough to satisfy another.
The curriculum of our best colleges ten years
ago was substantially that of our grandfathers'
times-excellent and comprehensive in that
day; but now, when the relations between the
scholar and the worker have been SO strangely
altered, when science has taken such an
enormous development, the learning which
used to embrace all that the most accom-
plished student wanted is only small part
important, if you will, but a small part after
all-of a really catholic education.
But it is clear that in the matter of educa-
ton we are now taking new departure. No
one can study the condition of our colleges
without perceiving how rapidly new systems
are displacing the old, and how our most en-
lightened instructors are quietly settling the
old feud about classical studies, not by de-
grading Greek and Latin from their time
honored eminence, but by combining with
them all the new arts and practical modern
sciences upon which SO much stress has been
laid in recent years. 1t is a sort of combina-
ton which would have been thought impos-
sible generation since; yet every year shows
it more and more successful and the annual
commencements become in consequence more
interesting to the outside multitude, and less
open to the little Jokes of the irreverent.
Thus the colleges are reforming them
selves, and giving us broad culture which
looks equally towards intellectual strength
and refinement, and immediate utility. The
great seats of learning are opening scientific
schools, and expending their best energies to
adapt them to the needs of the country. Prac-
| tical agriculture, chemistry, mining, metal
| lurgy, are taught with at least as much care
and thoroughness as the theoretical sciences.
To take examples that lie at our own door
| Columbia College has come to place upon
| its scientific course and its school of mines
| dependence quite as great as upon its classi-
| cal lectures; and the University of the City
of New York has just enlarged and reorga-
nized its scientific department, and estab-
lished for the arts and sciences complete
and separate faculty.
1t is not only in the kind of education
supplied that our colleges are advancing,
but they have also become far more liberal
in offering it to the whole people. Thus
the New York University announces that
hereafter its collegiate course will be abso
lutely free to all Cornell University not
only furnishes an education entirely with
out charge, but goes q step further, and
gives every student a chance to work fol
his living. This is characteristically Anne
rican improvement upon the old system OF
charitable foundations; for Mr.. Cornell under
stands that to let man earn his bread an6
butter is better than to give il to him. Al
Ithaca, accordingly, the poor lad may bs
supported without sacrificing his indepen
dence, and take instruction in books
in the arts, in the trades, and in domestic
economy all together. There, too, theory
and practice are united in a more perfec
manner than in any other establishment o.
learning in the world; and if experience jus
tify the expectations of its estimable founder
this institution will mark the era of totally
new sort of university culture Again, Vassa
College represents the principle established
only within few years-if, indeed, it is quit
established yet-that woman has right Il
the best education the age is capable o
affording; that all the sciences, all the arts
must be open to her if she chooses to follow
them; and whatever we may think of he
right to Join in political shindies stuff ballot
boxes, or build barricades, we shall stead
fastly maintain her right to the very highes
intellectual culture, or the pursuit of an
honest knowledge. A college such as thi
cannot fail, and cannot but be the exempla
, of many others. The University of Michiga
is no whit behind Cornell and Vassar; Hal
vard Yale, and many more are hkewis
broadening the culture they offer, and open
ing wider and wider means of access to it.
more complete and many sided education
greater facilities for extending it in any on
desired direction without being compelled I
, prosecute it in others not desired; easier az
proach to it alike for both sexes and all classe
these appear the most marked tendencie
of late collegiate progress. With them OF
colleges seem to be entering upon a ne
career of usefulness, in which we shall a
} wish them prosperity and honor.
: HORACE GREELEY FOR PRESID EN-
8 From the NJ Y World
1t is not to be disguised that the candidaC
: of Horace Greeley for the Presidency is tai
: ing hold of the Republican masses in wa