The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-26


has his own way to hoe in the world.
Within two years, at meeting OF the
head masters of the great English schools
of Elton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester,
Charter House. st. Paul's and Clifton,
very vigorous attack on Greek in schools
and colleges was made BY the head master
of Winchester, who advocated the sboli-
ton of obligatory Greek both at school
and college and the substitution OF science
or modern languages.
The English teacher urged the necessity
Of adapting education to individual tastes
and capacity, and he argued that the
Greek Language might be left in the hands
of those who really loved it. and could
cultivate it with success, who would
rescue it from its present degraded con-
dition, as the bugaboo of ounces and slug
CARDS. The master of Winchester came
within two votes Of carrying his resolu-
ton and these were cast by two OF the
smaller schools. Professor Blackie, the
famous Scotch professor of Greek, holds
the same view of the utter worthlessness
of the study of Greek to the average col
lege student who spends just time enough
upon it to give him wretched srnatter-
ing of the language. Professor Farrar,
the famous English teacher Of Greek, ex-
pressed the same views in public lecture
few years ago. This rebellion against
the college study of Greek comes from the
leading teachers of Greek in the English
public schools, which have always been
the stronghold of Greek. English culture
is beginning to agree with Charles Francis
Adams, who more than twenty years ago
bluntly urged his alma mater, Harvard
college, to drop Greek from its curriculum,
but at least fifteen years before Mr.. Adams
made his address, the celebrated English
thinker, Herbert Spencer, published an ar
ticle in the Westminster Review entitled,
what knowledge Is Worth the Most3"
in which he argued with great power that
since life was short, that .'art was long and
time was fieeting," it was not expedient,
save for man of wealth and leisure, or
professional scholar. to give much time to
the classics. At that day Spencer was de-
nounced as an educational hereto, but
the great scholars and thinkers on both
sides have come to agree with Spencer that
however desirable the classics may be As
part of the education of man proposing
to pursue the life of professional scholar,
they ought not to occupy large space in
q scheme of popular education where the
pupil expects soon to leave school for the
hroo d-u in Iaho NJ life
The best way to master English for writ
ing and speaking is read sound English
literature; for those who have welded
English best have won their skill in that
way. Great classical scholars are not sell
dom the authors of clumsy, awkward,
lifeless English, while those who have
wrought the best work with English
speech have been those whose previous
classical studies were sound English books
and English men. The time has been
when the study of the ancient classics was
exceedingly useful and important, but
that time has long passed, and the study
of modern languages gives the student
in mere discipline of memorizing,
constituting, etc., all that is claimed
for the "ancients," and equips him,
in the case of German and French, with
the knowledge of a social and commercial
speech of great practical utility. The
classics, studied in the superficial fashion
Of our schools, give no knowledge that is
not already an easily read open book
through standard English foundations,
while there is much In the sound living
German and French literature, whether
art, philosophy, science, criticism, fiction
OF poetry, that is either never translated,
or long delayed or poorly executed.
In 1870 all Germany marched on France
armed with An almost universal knowl-
edge of France, its topography and re-
sources, amassed by the widespread
knowledge Of the French language, while
the average Frenchman was as ignorant
of his enemy's situation, military capacity
and resources as he was of "the open polar
sea-" Modern knowledge speedily con-
quered modern ignorance.
There has been much nonsense written
about the exceptional. peculiar value of
sAS SAaooiCo W tuc SsUdeut, anu HuCu Oh IL
has passed into general acceptation and
reverent belief. Less than forty years ago
boys reading Homer were taught to believe
that in euphony the Greek surpassed all
languages, the teacher reciting in support
OF his judgment the famous "poluphlois
boio thalasse" line, but by and by the boy
found out that he had only to go to Shaks-
peare, Milton, Byron, Coleridge, Keats
and Shelley for English lines that at least
equal this in euphony. The English cul-
ture the average student needs can be bet
ter obtained by the study of English class
les than by those of antiquity. To skim
the classics is no help to culture;
while the average scholar has no time for
their profound study. There is much so
called school and college culture that
bears no more ultimate fruit for human
ity, for progress, for justice than the old
time learning of the fat friars who sucked
their living out of the superstition of the
state. They chanted truisms Just as
coldly and listlessly as they mumblingly
told off their beads. The votaries of this
barren monkish culture brought no good
message to the world. Their life was in
the Journalism of everything, in the SUBJ