The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-12-26
IarirnHnraL
Il. H. HOsKINs, Newport. vt. Editor.
The 1" Classics - In Education.


subject to the law of supply and demand,
like all other commodities. As the people
become more and more informed in regard
to the facts, they are getting to insist that
the time of their children shall not be
wasted in the study of things obsolete
when the world is full of new knowledge.
And there are beginning to be teachers
who catch the idea, and, so far, are fit to
teach in the peoples schools. The Msssa-
chusetts Agricultural College has had
president with classical education, q
president with very little education of any
kind, and has now apparently got, in
President Greenough, one who knows
good deal without forgetting his own time.
In recent speech he says:
"The act in accordance with which the
college was established does not require
that it should be administered in the in
terest of one class of working-men. Young
men have been fitted for great variety of
employments at this college as at other
colleges. Some of the graduates are cler-
gymen, some are lawyers, several are ply
sicians, while the majority are employed
in different departments of productive in
dustry. Some persons read the term 'ag-
ricultural in the title, and inquire if all
the graduates are farmers. If the ques-
ton is an honest one, it is an evidence of
pitiable ignorance; if it is put with
sneer at the farmers, whose sound judg-
ment has largely guided the public affairs
of this commonwealth, and whose steady
toll has in large degree ministered to its
material prosperity, then the question is
unworthy of citizen or of a man if the
question is a sneer at the college because
it does not propose an extended course in
the ancient classics, then it is an evidence
of miserable narrowness. Is young man
who cannot, or for sufficient reasons will
not,pursue the study of the dead languages,
to be deprived of a college course of study
That man is narrow-minded who regards
the course of instruction proposed by
classic college as the only course admissi-
BILE, or who, having received an education
by means of such a course, thinks there is
no other way to intellectual responsibility
than the one over which he has travelled.
l toiled too hard to gain the little know
OF them, and prize that little too highly
to speak disparagingly of them. But to
say that all liberal instruction must be run
in one groove is not wise. Our varied in
dustries at the present time require men
of large culture to direct them, and while
Latin and Greek may be of value to the
theologian or the lawyer, they can hardly
be considered necessary to the superin-
tendent of factory, the manager of a
railroad, the foreman on farm, or him
who tolls in some department of the ap-
piled sciences. If it is claimed that the
discipline from the study of these Ian
guages cannot be gained in any other way,
l must aft I'm that that claim is not yet
proved. We have not yet tested in our
courses of study the disciplinary value of
the study of the modern languages.
I" 1t is not easy to estimate the value of
the thought. the feeling and the endeavor
treasured for us in our mother tongue.
He who acquaints himself with the best
literature of the English people, takes
hold of the imperishable thought of the
race foremost in the progress of the world,
and shares the best product of that race.
Chaucer is worth more to us than all the
martial glamour of his sovereigns. If
Sponsors sweet music had not reached US,
If Bacon had not appeared as teacher
of his own aud all subsequent times, if
Shakespeare had not given US his almost
superhuman revelation of human nature,
if Milton had not swept from his Tyre
strains that can never die, the Elizabethan
period, with all its great political events,
ha h,,t nf
The course in the study of Eng
lish literature at the college shall at least
do something to introduce the student to
the study and the appreciation of the
wealth treasured in our literature. Very
much might be said of the value of a
knowledge of French and German as a
means of keeping abreast of the line of
progress in science. The latest discoveries
in science are often announced in these
languages before they are described in
English. Another advantage is the in
PRODUCTION of the student to the modes of
thought of other nations. The German
and the English language have largely a
common source, hence a knowledge of
German greatly aids the knowledge OF
English, while by the study of French,
the student is led to some proper appre.
hension of the Romance element of the
English language"
All this is good sound common sense
The English race is bigger than the Ro
man, the French race is bigger than the
Greek. Our collegians stupedly look up
to the ancients, and say we really never
can know anything except by spending
years in studying their literature, just al
though men are not men now, as much as
of old. Those Greeks whom the collegi
ans worship learned all they knew and de
veloped their grand art, their refined
philosophy and their feeble knowledge o.
nature without the aid of any Other
people. The Romans did the same, ex
cept that some of their scholars learned o.
the Greeks what many believed it would
have been better for the Romans if the,
had not known. Greek literature was t.
the people of the Italian peninsula goot
deal what French literature is thought
nowadays to be for the English race
source of corruption, moral and mental.
While we have no objection to tn,
teaching of modern languages, or even o
some Latin and Greek, if they could b.