Woodstown register. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 187?-1892, 1883-09-04
EDUCATIONAL.
GREEK IN AMERICAN COLLEGES.

GREEK IN AMERICAN COLLEGES,
Mr.. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., has set
the scientific men and the advocates of
classical education by the ears with his adj
dress before the Phi Bet Kappa Associa
ton at Harvard. The quarrel is an old
one, which has been steadily growing since
science got out of astrology and began to
work by the inductive method. The fight
is hot enough in England, but hotter in
America, where the classical system of
education has had so hard a time in get
ting a due allowance of means for thor.
ough work hat it cannot show its highest
results. The necessity we Americans have
been under of conquering a wide surface
has left us title inclination to go deep in
to the soil n any field. We nave never
been able % get, at home, a thorough
training If any branch, except in the
coarser utilities so called. In Germany,
where the classical system has been fully
developed, there is no complaint of want
Of t~horoughness.
The whole world goes to Germany for
intellectual training of the higher order
Even the advocates of what is called the
modern system point to German litera
ture as IN every way worthy to supplant
the Greek literature. Next to that, they
would put the literature of England be-
fore science had any part in its training
that is. when there was no other than the
modified classical system in use. They
would pick out Shakespeare and Milton
and Bunyan and Clarendon and Addison
and Swift and Goldsmith and Gray and
Burke and Gibbon and Shelley and Burns
and Macsulay and Carlyle and Hawthorne
and Thackeray..and Tennyson'-to copy
Mr.. Adams's list-all of whom were train.
ed under, and nearly all directly by, the
old system. But poor America, which has
been stinted in the classics, has only one
genuine epoch of literary culture to show,
and that one beginning at the time, and al
most wholly dependent on the fact, that
her scholars could go to Germany to COM
plete their studies-not in the direction of
the physical sciences, but under a system
which trained wholly by the classical,
methods. We have learned in America
to shoe horses, plant maize by machinery,
and spread a vast system of railroads over
the country, which are fast eating out the
vitals OF our old fashioned integrity. We
have built up such a clatter of machine
shops that our very thought is stunned.
Mr.. Adams would have US continue and
develop more thoroughly the process of
machine-life He finds the struggle for
existence so intense that those studies
which belong in a large degree to the or
namental and soothing he would have dis
continued in favor of those which reach
exclusively after bread and butter, He
does not say this directly. Indeed, he de-
MES that this Is his aim but his argu.
ment lies against the classical system, and
however much he may pare 1t down,
and qualify it, and limit his immediate
demands, this is the upshot of the claim
of science which he voices.
We will not 60 into a defence of Greek
now; nor are we inclined to oppose GER
tain parts of Mr.. Adams's demand. 1t is
not by any means proved by the modern
ists,' as they call themselves, that French
and German, as spoken languages. are of
practical advantage to more than a tenth
of the graduates of our colleges. 1t would
doubtless be found that the occasions
when a cultivated man needs an actual
speaking acquaintance with French or
German amour. to rot more than half an
hour in a year for nine-tenths of the co..
lege graduates. When the graduate leaves
college he does not always go abroad, or
find a Gallo or Teutonic neighbor, or get
invited to a dinner-party to meet distin-
guished foreigners who have come to
America without a knowledge of the Eng
llsh language; nor does he often enter a
form OF business where he will be brought
into contact with foreigners who do not
speak his tongue. On the contrary, be
goes to work at home among people who
speak English, and he speaks English
hlmself-good, bad, or indiferent-from
years end to years end. If by some
chance he comes in contact with an alien,
and has business or social relations with
him, in ~ninety-nine cases out of a hun
dred he will find that the foreigner has
learned to speak English also, as he ought
if he has come to America. When you
are in Rome you do as the Romans do.
Mr.. Adams has vastly exaggerated the
advantages of a speaking acquaintance
with these modern tongues for the average
graduates. If he will talk with them =
with men who live in the centres even,
where foreigners most congregate, in New
York, for lnstance-he will find that nine
cultivated men in ten will be able tc
count on the fingers ofone hand the half
hours when they have had real occasion
to wish that they could speak any Other
modern language but their own. He i:
uninstructed, however, If he supposes tha|
ample means are not provided, especially
in the university which he most bitterly
attacks, for this tenth man, or for the 9th.
er nine, if they can be made to see the ad.
vantage of the provision. No boy car
now enter Harvard College without som
knowledge of either French or German
Ample provision is made in most of III,
preparatory schools for at least one or tive
years Of good work in both these Ian.
guages. In such centres as New York
where there is a coniaux of aliens, ample pr,
vision is made in most preparatory school
for as many years IN French and German
as in Greek and Latin. The course cal
easily be made fixed and productive, S,
that with the generous provisioa which
the college now makes for perfectlng an.
polishing the product. no man e~nterin,
college from these schools need graduate
from Harvard without a good speaking
writing, and reading acquaintance witt