National Republican., 1883-06-25
Commencement Season.

The commencement season is upon us, with
the fervid sun of the almost midsummer
From all points of the compass come reports
of the annual school and college ceremonies
which bring to a close the scholastic year.
Of new.hedged doctors and lawyers let loose
upon the world, of graduating dons of Har-
ward and colored graduates of Atlanta and
other schools, of diplomas, medals, premiums,
honors, salutatories, and valedictories, we
have an abundant proof that learning is on
the rampage. Minerva and the muses. are on
the boom. The generation that is to take our
places and push us from our stools !" is get
ting educated with dizzy rapidity and much
loud proclamation of the fact. Mothers are
swelling with natural pride in dwelling on
tho genius of their boys and tho graccs and
accomplishments of their girls while fathers
may be somewhat skeptical on the subject
that the world will be seriously disturbed in
its even course by any of their hopeful
progeny.
| The Now York Tribune, always on apollo
gist or advocate for scholastic training,
thinks there is one advantage which
the college graduate has over his fell
low men, which is, that he knows that he
does not know everything" The glimpse
which the college graduate gets of the vast
vista of learning by porting over tones of
antique and modern wisdom makes him feel
his want Of universal knowledge, and hence
gives him modesty. By and by he gets on
the staff Of leading morning journal and
becomes teacher Of men and a scholar in
politics, and, it not unfrequcntly happens,
soon feels his Importance and loses a part Of
his modesty Socrates was modest at first,
and said he knew nothing, as his Bos.
we'll, Xenophon, tell us. but he afterward
became a very self-confdent fellow in his
day and generation, and might have become
leading editor of one of our morning journals
were the place not already filled with very
able bodied editor. Amidst this saturnalia of
the learned professors, gifted teachers, and
ambitious students a voics comes up from
Vassar. Not however, a voice of exultation
and triumph, but one of warning and expos
tulaton. The vassar girl says that she is
overworked, her nervous system exhausted
and depressed, and her very vitality sapped.
She begs TO call halt in the methods to
which she is subjected. She is particularly
severe on the honor system. She says it creates
jealousy and spite among the girls who work
| for ha nd a fop1ino nf az for
study among those who do not expect to
achieve the honors. The instructors are in
sympathy with the honor girls, and stimulate
them to exhaustive effort, while the remain
der of the class is neglected, forgetfui that to
the mediocrities in intellect and the slow in
development who constitute the larger part
of every class, the care and sympathy of the
teacher are mainly due. The whole
college body becomes inoculatod with
the idea that to get class honors is
the main object of student life. The sound
mental growth, accompanied by Increased
bodily strength and frmness, the rational
confidence inspired by the habit of graphing
in the secusion of the closet or the silence of
the study room with problems old and stale
in the history of tho human intellect, but new
and difficult to each generation of Students
the determination TO reach the required solu-
tion by individual and independent effort and
the knowledge of human nature acquired by
daily association with so much diversity of
disposition and manners, and the habit ac-
quirod of unquestioning obedience to consti-
tuted authority and established law-are
lost sight Of All this goes for nothing
and benefits by those whose vision is shaded
by the vain and dazzling show of college
honors. The Vassar girls seem to think that
the course of education would flow as smoothly
and better results be obtained if class honors
wero reegated to the age of comparative un-
enlightenment, from whence they originated.
Tho young ladies have at least this credit
In questioning the wisdom ofthe methods to
which they have been subjected, they have
shown some originality of thought and indie
pendenco ofjudgment.
The originality of the undergraduates of
the other sex, too often we regret to say, as
serts itself in silly pranks cowardly oppres-
sion of fjuniors, and clandestine and pusillani =
nous infraction of law. But in spite of all of
its emptiness and vanity, VIC all like to re.
| turn in memory to schoolboy holidays and
f college life 1t is custom deserving much
honor and observation when the alumni of an
ancient and respectable alma mater gather
0 annually in the never forgotten halls and
there renew the associations of the fervid and
sauguino days of youth, with feeling refer
ence to absent comrades, whether they bC
? still buheting the storms and bat
tling with tho trials of the world
o or whether they have quilted the strifes o
a tho earth and have gone over to the fullel
n ranks of the silent majority.