The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-05
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DIR. M,CosH ON THE NEW DEPARTURE.

DIR. MC0sH ON THE NEW DEPARTURE.
President McCosh's pamphlet, "The New
Departure in Education, "-being a reply to
President Eliot's defense of it before the Nine
teenth Century Club, in New York, is publish
ed by Scribner's, and to say the least, is racy
reading President Eliots proposition is, that
in a university the student must choose his
studies, and the student must govern himself.
Dr. McCosh says lie "can prick this bubble so
that all may know how little there is inside"
And this he attempts with vigor and posi-
tiveness of statement that is pugnacious OF
the Harvard catalogue he says that it gives
two hundred choices to its students, younger
and older; that he has difficulty in under
standing it. and would rather study the entire
cosmos; that he can only compare it to the
cycles, epicycles, and eccentricities of the
old astronomy; that an examination
of students upon this catalogue
would be a better test of a clear
head than upon some of the sub
iects in it, such as French plays and novels. !"
He shows that student may get degree of
A. NJ from Harvard by taking in the sophie
more year, French literature Of the seven
tenth century, modern European history,
fine art and water-coloring with counterpoint
in music; in the junior year, French literature
of the eighteenth century, early medieval his
tory, botany, and history of music; and, in the
senior year, French literature of the present
century, elementary Spanish, Greek art, and
free thematic music; and further, that there
are twenty such dilletanti courses, which may
be taken in Harvard. DIR. McCosh asserts that
this is not an advance in scholarship; and, for
himself, he would rather send a young man to
any of the old-fashioned colleges where he
would have to study Latin, Greek, mathemat-
les, rhetoric, physics, logic, ethics, and politi
cal economy.
DR.. McCosh says the students should be in
lectures and recitations every day, and that
parents should have security that their sons
protesting to be at college are not out skating
all winter, shooting ducks Chesapeake
bay. lie says, about this matter of
attendance, that Harvard is aping the German
colleges, forgetting that we have not the pow
erful safeguard of an examination by high
6cers in church or state, and that if young
man fails his prospects in life are blasted. Not
till the State of Massachusetts, passes law
like that of Prussia may Harvard relax her
attendance. Moreover, the German students
have taken prescribed course in their adj
mirable gymnasium, which is equal to fresh
man and sophomore year of American col
leges. In Harvard there are now in no year
any studies obligatory OH all, except part of
the freshman year studies. Everything is
scattered like the star dust out of which
worlds are formed, while in Princeton num-
Der of disciplinary studies are required giving
us central sun, with rotating planets" Dr.
McCosh evidently believes in electives but
thinks the faculty should select the greater
part of them. He would, in college
course, regard the differentiation which
scatters, and also the concen-
tration which holds things together. y
Regarding the third point, freedom in govern
insnt, DIR. McCosh is.very severe, contending
that We are not to give up preaching, Bible
instruction or prayers-even Emerson stand
ing up manfully for the retention of the latter
in Harvard. He throws down the challenge,
and formally proposes that 'this club should
have another meeting, in which President
Eliot viii defend the new departure in the re-
ligion of colleges, and / engage, with Gods
help, to meet him" He would not dismiss
and expel without also, advising remonstrat-
ing and disciplining In his thirty two years
of college teaching and government, sixteen in
Scotland and sixteen in America, he had never
expelled student, and of those he had disci-
plined, nine-tenths were reformed. DR.. Nc
Gosh closes with the inquiry whether there
has of late been any great poem, scientific dis
covery, great history or philosophic work by
the young men of Cambridge and says that
it Is "keenly discussed whether, in the pres
emit and coming modes of dissipated instruc.
sion, it is possible to rear men of the like
intellectual calibers as the great galaxy thai
appeared an age ago in Harvard, under the
old training Also, that the literary Journals
Tor which our young men prepare articles have
ixed their seat in New York, rather than Bos
ton. Finally he says: Let not Edinburgh and
Scotland, and the Puritans in England know
that student may pass through the once
Puritan College of America without having