New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-09-17
THE CHEAP COLLEGES.

THE CHEAP COLLEGES.
There is a general opening this week Of all
schools and colleges throughout the country.
Very few of us stop to consider how EXTENDED
or how momcntOus this movement among the
Young folks is. Within the last few
days, however, over five million boys
and girls scampered up the well-worn
steps of the public schools to receive gratui-
tOus education at the hands of the State, be-
sides those who crowded into private schools,
scminaries, or colleges. In the East, where the
majority of boys who receive collegiate train
ing are the sons of wcl-tO-dO people, the dis
cussiOn on American educational systems limits
itself to the differing methods adopted by the
instructors. and their probable or proved sue
cess. One important element of a lads train
ing is therefore usually ignored by theorists,
and that is self-help; although it is so import
ant that the old adage nearly hits the bulls
eye of truth "What man knows he teaches
"himself.'
The great mass of students who entered the
smaller colleges in the West last week are, 1T
is safe to say, paying part at least of their
own expenses. These smaller colleges abound
in the farming districts; the curriculum lays
the foundation at least of knowledge and gives
a bias to scholarly habits of thoughts the rates
of tuition are low, and boarding in the ada
cent villages is cheap. The temptation to ele-
vate himself by their help is brought to the
very door of the labOring boy who has been
taught at the district school, 1t is from this
class of boys that these colleges are replen-
ished the majority of younger students
who enrolled their names last Monday
have worked in the field since May
to earn money to keep them in
college during the Winter. After the first two
years have been conquered in this way, the
young fellow goes through the usual routine of
teaching and study alternately, until he has
gained his profession. The conservative scholar
of course protests against such an education as
inadequate, fragmentary, and shallow; he as
srres us, and truly, that the graduate of an
ordinary American college is barely fitted to
begin his training at "a German university that
the mind, perpetually annoyed and perplexed
by providing the necessities of animal life, is
unfit to receive high thought or yield itself to
the influences of knowledge with the requisite
healthy tranquility.
All of which is true, and would bear upon
the case if the after-life of the American stu
dent were likely to be passed IN shades of let
tered ease in profound scientific or even philo-
logical research. But our farm-boy has only
four years at the most to give to study, and
study is not an end with him, but a means
the weapon with which hard, practical fight
for bread and butter is to be fought. Every
fragment of mathematical, scientific, or even
classical knowledge he hopes to turn over and
N il
the greater his difficulty in acquiring them is,
the sllrer will be his hold on them, and
the more ready will be his command of them
for immediate use. The few profound scholars
of whom America can boast belonged as
rule to an atuent class to whom learning
came as an inheritance and birthright but the
practical men who have nodded the politics,
the social life, even the thought of the cOun-
try, the Frankllns, Websters, Clays, ,Greeleys,
LincOlns, earned their knowledge precisely as
the young fellow in the Western college is
winning his-by the sweat of their brOws. 1t
was not the knowledge which was power to
them. but the self-denial, the patience, the OBJ
stinate loyalty to their own idea the staying
"pOwerr acquired in the struggle for that
knowledge.
Superficial thinkers, too, who sheer at the
smattering of learning bestowed in the course
of ordinary colleges, leave out of the question
the sOftening. ennObling influence of those
four years of study not only on the lad, but
his family. Granted that in "A few years after
leaving his modest little Alma Mater he has
forgotten the uses of the Greek particles and
cannot solve the simplest algebraic problem |;
the effect of that early struggle for noble
purpose has elevated his whole nature the
brief association with scholarly men and the
glimpse of the side of the world which is not
business, have made his life more liberal,
given it higher significance and purpose Any
one conversant with the agricultural districts
of this country will know the difference be
tween the clean, sOrdid farm house, where the
object of the hatchet-f faced father and mother
and their bOOrish sons is to eat and work to-
day and prepare victuals and food for the
rest of the year, and n like farmhouse to
which the boys and girls return in vacation
from college or school. In one is every sign
of animal stagnatiOn in the other are books,
magazines, prints music. every cheerful indi-
cation of active lives keeping step with the
age to which they belong 1t is this general
elevation and widening of domestic life that
tells on the country, after all, rather than the
work of any individual, be he Franklin or
Webster.
o., T;IJar 10 rosnona;hla for ona frightful evil