Litchfield enquirer., 1879-01-23
College Education.

l of recent years in eur best Eastern colleges, particularly at Harvard Wemust not forget, however, that while thereis marked advance evident in such institutions as Harvard, Am herst, Yale, Cornell. Michigan, and no doubt, 4 in other of the larger and better endowed uni. versailles, the great bulk of our so-called Ameri- can colleges still adhere, in all probability to the older education. Our census of 1870 shows more than eighty universities, with about 21, 900 students: and nearly five hundred colleges, with some 70, 900 students. No doubt the American trick Of attaching big names to lit tie things has made these statistics of very doubtful value When the State eI Kentucky reports two universities and forty two colleges. with over 5000 pupils; Arkansas, eight col leges and over thousand pupils and Oregon two universities, six colleges and 1O37 students we cannot but wonder at the marvellous spread of liberal learning where the evidences of such learning have hitherto been few. These sta- tstics are of some value at least, in showing that most of the Congressmen who are count ed as college-bred, are in reality graduates of
 
 land, are authorized to grant college diplo- mas
 Our correspondent takes issue with several statements of ours, particularly in reference to the presence of botany natural history and political historyin our present college curriculs. No doubt he is correct inregard to the Harvard I teaching of botany, although we notice that it's study is not obligatory even there. In the Yale academic course it appears only as an optional study for half a term of one year. In History and Political Science there is instruc- 1 lion at Yale during one year at the option of the student, and in the Harvard elective course there is the opportunity for obtaining valuable knowledge on these topics. How much ad- vantage the average Yale or Harvard student takes of their optional studies we have little means of knowing. We hope he improves them to an extent of which we have hitherto been unaware. That little is taught regard ing them in most of the other American col leges-with probably several important ex- ceptions-we are still inclined to believe. We mentioned botany particularly, because it in- wolves a training of the eye, as well as of the mind which finds no place in the ordinary academic college course. Does our contribu- tor who is himself graduate of Harvard, 1 believe that the average graduate of that col .ege, walking about our New England woods and fields, would know as many of the plants and trees he meets as the average New England 1 farmer?
 With every disposition to do justice to the l evident progress of the best American educa- 1 ton, we must take exception to the fundamen- tai idea that still underlies college system, that it is judicious expenditure of time for the American boy to devote three or four of the best years of his life to the acquisition of Latin and Greek. As we have before stated. there can be no doubt that any mental training strengthens intellectual power; but that the mind of the average college student is broad ened and liberalizcd by his study of the dead languages to any appreciable extent, we have come to thoroughly disbelieve: We say this in spite of our great respect for the literature of ancient Greece. CThe Latin isderivative and vastly inferior) Sc valuable is that literature that if our students could master it as they might master French and German, we might still cling to it's study. They cannot. So rad ically different is the construction of the an cient language from the modern, that the bulk of our college students utterly fail to reach the heart of it. They derive training but not en- lightenment from it. When the average graduate leaves college-unIess he becomes a eacher-he usually dropsh Latin and Greek, forever. Years afterwards, perhaps, as his eye falls on page of Demosthenes,. he con ! templates it, struck, much as the anna teur wonders and admires as he glances down an orchestral score full of the scattered trans posed, and reiterated harmonies of Beetho- | ven symphony-but, alas, with even less com ! prehension of it's real meaning! Greek litera- ture may be cultus of the elderly college graduate. He cannot claim it as culture That boys should have to spend three years of sharp training in these languages before enter ing Yale or Harvard and about two years longer in their study there-all to SO little practical purpose as this--is the blunder that carries our dissatisfaction well on towards the extreme point" When there was no litera- ture but Latin and Greek when English, French and German were 'vulgar" tongues | indeed; when there was DO such thing as Science in existence a college course was necessary. We cannot believe that it is necessary any longer Less time than is spent in the preliminary study of the dead languages would enable our boys to become familiar with French and German as they can never become l familiar with Latin and Greek. Their univer- sity course might then liberalze and broaden, while it trained their minds, by real onlturv in the live literature of countries that are full of modern thought and modern progress.
 The college which in this latter half of the Nineteenth century still practices on the dogma that 'the acquisition of knowledge ought al ways to be subservient to mental training confesses it's own incempetency. No one need be concerned but that the mental training will follow the requirement of knowledge fast enough. Our Washington friend in effect con- cedes this when he says, ''the authorities are beginning to understand that the study of science d0es train and drill the mind" If 1t were indeed true that training does not natur- ally follow knowledge, but should precede it by five or six years, we consider our recent project for a national university where young Americans may thoroughly train their minds at chess and Sanscrit deserving of most serious consideration.
 There is another kind of training that ought not to be neglected at our universities-a train ing of hand, eye and body. The old Greek, 50 vshemently admired of classical scholars, thought as much of his physical as of his men, tai culture. The college is at bottom, monas- tic It had it's origin in medieval darkness and is still. to g lamentable extent, blind to the old as we'll as to the new light. It trains men up to the contemplation of the weak re- flections of things in books instead of to the