Morning journal and courier., 1883-06-30
THE sTUOY OF THE CLASSICS.

In his oration before the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard Charles Francis Adams, jr, foreibly arraigned the present method of 4raining young mensin college. He said that he was unable to speak of his own training with respect, and continued: ''Such train ing as got, useful for the struggle, got after, instead of before, graduation, and it came hard; while I have never been able-and now, no matter how long may live, shall never be able-to overcome some great disadvantages which the superstitions and wrong theories and worse practices of my Alma Mater inflicted upon me. And not on me alone The same may be said of my contemporaries, as I have observed them in success and failure. What was true in this respect of the college~of thirty years ago is, I apprehend, at least partially true of the college to day; and it is true not only of Cambridge, but of other colleges. They fail properly to fit their graduates for the work they have got to do in the life that awaits them.''
 MT. Adams acknowledged that this was harsh language to apply to one's nursing mother, and proceeded to explain why he used it. He charged that the great fault of col lege training is the attention paid to Greek and Latin. Of these two languages he said The college absolutely insists on Latin and Greek. Latin I will not stop to contend over. That is a small matter. Not only is it 8 comparatively simple language, but it has it's modern uses. Not only is it directly the mother tongue of all southwestern Europe, h,-kI Ik 1kol in scientific nomenclature. Hence, there are reasons why the educated man should have at least an elementary knowledge of Latin. That knowledge also can be acquired with no great degree of labor. To master the lsn- guage would be another matter, but in these days few think of mastering it. The study of Greek in the way it is tradi- tionally insisted upon as the chief require ment to entering college is a positive educa- tionel wrong. It has already wrought great individual and general injury, and is now working it. It has been productive of no compensating advantage. It is 8 superstition. Unlike Latin, Greek is 8 very difficult lan- guage Unlike it, too, apart from the access Greek affords when thoroughly mastered to perhaps the noblest of literatures, it is lan- guage which has no modern uses. Not only is it a dead tongue, but it bears no immedi- ate relation to any living speech or literature of value Like all rich dialects, it is full of anomalies; and accordingly it's grammar is the delight of grammarians and the despair of everyone else.
 He asserted that he was no believer in that narrow, scientific and teehnoIogical training which is now so much extolled, for a practical, and too often a mere vulgar, money-making utility, seems to be it's natural outcome; but he would have colleges seek fresh inspiration at the fountains of living thought The avenues to modern life and living thought are the modern languages, notably German and French. These lan- guages Mir Adams would have taught in colleges, and he would have them taught in the worlds sense of the word and not in the college sense of it. He said: I am talking of really knowing something. I do not want my children to get smattering knowledge of French and of German-such knowledge as was and now is given to boys of Latin and Greek, but I do want them to be taught to write and to speak those languages, as well as to read them; in 8 word, so to master them that they will thereafter be tools always ready to their hands. This requires labor. It is thing which cannot be picked up, except in the countries where the languages are spoken. If academies in America are to instruct in this way, they must devote themselves to it.
 In his oration, of which the above indi- oates the spirit, MT. Adams said well and forcibly what great many are thinking. But great many also continue to think that the study of Greek and Latin does more to train the mind and fill it with g real love of learning than anything else does or can. What is called ia classical education" was sharply and often attacked before MT. Adams attacked it. But it has stood the test of ages of experience well, and will probably continue for long time to be good thing for many minds.