The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-06-20


leges and Their Work.
It is scarcely worth while every time the
commencement season comes round to re-
mind our colleges that the young men they
are sending into the world are thoroughly I'M
fit for the battle of life The cry for practi-
cal education as opposed to tho classical our
riculum is only too likely to become the
merest cant The young clergyman, the
young lawyer or the young man of business
viii not find the rudiments of the natural
sciences more useful than . little Latin and
less Greek The college professors are right
when they tell us that the subject of study is
Of little importance when compared with the
mental training it affords. If it were possible
to give the college course q practical turn, so
as to supply young men with mental train
ing and stock Of special information suited
to their pursuits in life, it would be well
enough. perhaps, to do So In most
Of our colleges the course is sufaci-
emily full. and varied to admit of this;
but few young men at college know what their
future pursuit is to be. The destined clergy
man becomes q lawyer the destined lawyer
doctor and the destined doctor drops at once
into some subordinate clerical position.
Young men cannot be fitted out with stock
of special knowledge for callings which
neither they nor their parents are fitted to
select The whole matter is matter of
chance. and it finally resolves itself into the
proposition that any mental training is better
than none, and that it is better to know some
thing of classical literature and mathematics,
acquired as they must be by hard study, than
merely to skim the surface of modern thought.
After years of complaint that the colleges do
not fit young men for the battle of life. it may
be well to inquire if this is the fault of the
colleges. The battle of life is one of two
things-the earnest struggle for bread or the
vulgar pursuit of wealth. These can only
be learned in the shops Of the mechanic or
the marts of business. No college curriculum
ever can embrace them. A college course,
whatever branches of study it may include, is
quite as likely to unfit as to fit men for useful
lives A collegiate education means, to a GER
tain extent, freedom from the toll for mere
bread; if it means toll at oil it is
in sphere superior to ordinary labor, pro-
fessional, literary and scientific pursuits. The
poor mans son is lifted above his fathers
social position, and on his return from college
he too often looks with horror upon the
coarse ways of his mother and sisters. The
farmers son forsakes his parents rooftree for
the sitting air of the city. Examples might
be cited indefinitely, and they would all go to
prove that little learning is dangerous
thing. We are not sure but that the Pennsyl-
vania Dutchmen are right in refusing the
accomplishments of higher education to
their daughters, because they unfit the girls for
farmers wives. Strauss waltzes will not bar
monte with butter-making any more than
Beethoven's sonatas will blend with the
music of the threshing machine. The vale
dictorian at Yale or Harvard is not the man to
steer plough or take charge of q shoeshop or
corner grocery. These things are not the
fault OF the colleges for collegiate instruction
presupposes that the four years course is only
the foundation for life of study. We would
not discourage any one, not even the
humblest, in ON ambitious yearning after o
college diploma, but we would remind all such
that it divorces them from their former lives
and is quite as likely to lead to failure as
success.
When we come to grapple with this subject
of college education we find that, view it as
we may, our thoughts become o mere bundle
Of platitudes. There is much plausibility and
much truth in anything we may say on either
side of the question. Philosophers of GER
tain school-practical philosophers, without
culture, who have constituted themselves the
champions of educaton-have for years be-
Titled the mission of the colleges. They sneer
at the presumed ignorance of the college
graduate and his inexperience and unftness
unconsciously in this ridicule; but even to
these it is o matter of surprise how apt the
ignorant graduate is to learn. Harvard sends
her sons to New York, and in a few months
they have mastered the mysteries of the me-
tropolis and marked out future for them
the young men who come out from our col
leges at this season of the year. Put what
estimate we may upon their knowledge of
Homer and Horace, we are bound to admit
that they'have acquired aptness and self-re-
lance. Many of them fail and, falling sink
out of sight; but the rest go on, growing
stronger and stronger The poor as well as
the rich have their opportunity, though for
both it is at best nomadic existence in a
new sphere from that in which they were
born.
To us the objection to the college course is
not SO much that the young graduate is un-
fitted for the pursuits Of an intellectual life as
that he is untitled because dissatisfied with
any other than intellectual pursuits. The
colleges seldom send recruits anywhere than
to the professions. But are the colleges to
&c. kh;ao