Litchfield enquirer., 1879-01-09
Thursday Jan. 9, 1879.
College Education.

eaten Inc resolution discussed was an ex- trcne ooc-in fscs deDOuncing the college as nuEssnce- Fex would assent to such prope ss1iOa- Tl1ai any could be found to uphold il woald seen lo indicate some grave weakness tn cur existing college system.
 Some advantages mus be ccaCedcd to any system of mental culture which associates young men together in it's pursuit The mind is trained t0 habits of severe and continuous application The student loses that self con ceit which is sc apt to grow up in the solitary scholar from lack of competition with other equally keen intellecis. Moreover good col lege Is a democracy where the student learns men sS well ss books: where, in short, he learns to se, a proper estimate on others as we'll ss upon himself All this would be ac- cemplished in a college ai which nothing was studied but Sanscrit and chess. The most ar CuoVls of games, and the primitive language oi our race. would exercise the intellects and test the abilities of four hundred young men. per haps as thoroughly as any of our present col lege ca -rieuId. Such course would train the mind as gymnastics train the body, but ii would teach no useful art. Is there not the same difficulty with the larger part of the pres ent college course? No doubt Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics may be worth little more to the sudden, in after life than San scrit and chess. How much? No doubt he continues all his life to reverence Greek much as the bar of Massachusetts are said to have reverenced their Chief Justice "They look on him as the Hindoo looks on his idol They know he is very ugly, and they believe he is very great" Do Thucydides, and Plato, and 1Eschylus and Demosthenes, become any then adventure little Xenopheu and Virgil, or possibly Homer and Horace. Does he grapple with SOphocles or Tacitus?
 Worst of all, dc our colleges train men to the elegant or even to the accurate use of their own language, or to any thorough apprecia ton of their own literature? No doubt there are college superstitions which cling about the names of Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Addison Cowper, and Goldsmith Has the college graduate learned to really enjoy either of these older masters of the English language?
 Passing from literature to science, how much that is practically valuable comes into the college academic course? The farmer knows more of botany and of natural history than the college graduate. Of the mathemat- ics of mechanics and astronomy he should, in deed know something but he has no more than a school girls acquaintance with chemis- try and the 'elogies. Of the political history of his own country he knows less than the tav- ern lounger who sells his vote for a drink of whiskey. Of the general history of his own and of the other countries he has learned little in the regular college course, and that little is poisoned by denominational prejudice. The Luther of the Catholic and of the Protestant college the Charles I, of the Episcopalian, and of the Congregationalist; the Darwin of the sectarian and of the unsectarian-diff as day light differs from darkness As preliminary training for the professiens-divini excepted the unpracticalness of the college course is decided objection. To the lawyer, knowl- edge of book-keeping would be of vastly more practical value than a knowledge of Greek He needs to be good accountant rather than good mathematician. To the physician a knowledge of chemistry and of botany are of much practical value. Mathematics and the dead languages are of no use, except that smat- tering winch might assist him towards under standing the clumsy Greek names with which scholars have encountered science
 The modern college, indeed, has never out grown the evil bias of it's monastic origin. It's graduates are apt to find themselves out of place, in the outside world. They may have acquired monkish love of study and con- temptation, but they have lost their aptness for life of action. Hence college-bre men who fall in the professions, always over crowded, are liable to become failures for life, The true bent of the higher American educa- ton is plainly towards the polytechnic rather than the scholastic. Little as we admire the martinet discipline of West Point, it's educa tlon seems justly considered as practically superior to the education furnished by our col. leges. Substitute the German language thorough training in English. some adequate CODStlttl- tional history of our own times, together with such elementary scientific work Gas well as study) as time will admit, and we should have training much more suitable to the American youth than those furnished by system bor- rowed from Oxford and Cambridge Just as an access of carbon to our atmosphere would tendto retrogression of races-from mammal to saurian-so the atmosphere of the menastic college tends to Reaction, to the growth of Ritualists in religion and Jingoes in politics Happily the tendency even of the American academic college course is in the opposite di- rection. The progress of the last quarter of a century is marked and encouraging. What surprises us is that with SO much of progress and reformation the old superstitions should still retain such firm grip upon the American college professor One cannot justly say now, however, as might well have been remarked in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, that 'The most unteachable of mortals is the teacher"
 The statistics adduced by our Washington contributor seem to us to have an indirect rather than direct bearing upon the question ct issue. The fact is that our public men, with few exceptions are selected from single pro- fession-that of the law. Three-quarters of every American Congress, or Admin tration are lawyers. Our friends figures may tend to prove that collegiate education is of some advantage to alawyer. They will hard ly carry him further :.
 While we do not urge the abolition of our present college system, our dissatisfaction with 1t reaches well on towards that extreme point Aental gymnastics are no true education One cunning representation of the advantage Of real knowledge over mere learning from the hand of great artist, will always remain Vivldly before our eyes. In Foul Play" one Of Charles Reade's most enchanting stories. a young gentleman of varied scientific acquire ment IS cast upon an uninhabited island in