New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1892-04-21
THE NEW SYSTEM or EDUCATION

| THE NEW S1SILN OF EDOCHiION.
We have often commented on the utter fool
| ishness of trying to stop movement which starts
anywhere in the ncighbOrhood of Boston. Sooner
or later the Boston idea is bound to prevail. which
is only natural when we consider the absolutely
| bewderng amount of brains of the finest quality
concentrated in that haunt of learning and genius,
Without Boston this country would be fat on its
back
The latest great idea TO appear in Boston is in
regard to the educational question. This new
Boston notion is, substantially. that education in
the past has been gone at wrong end foremost, as
it were We need scarcely stop TO describe the
| usual educational course which has always been
pursued in the case of youth. A boy is sent TO
school at an early age and kept there as steadily
as the exigencics OF good swimming facilities,
favorable fishing weather, an excellent squirrel
hunting season or later ON boat race or a head
ache in the morning will allow until about the
time he may be described as budding into full
| nedged manhood. when he is graduated from COL
| cge and his education is humOrously said TO be
| completed But it has long been observed that
| after a young man is discharged or escapes from
| the college lie has great deal TO learn of the
practical affairs Of lifc and that while he is learn
| ing this he very frequently forgets all that he
learned in college. Now what Boston proposes is
to give man his experience with life first and then
| polish him off in college. The new system will
give a boy the plain and emnently practical rudl-
ments Of reading and writing. with touch OF
arithmetic, and then turn him upon the world
with his fresh and mpressonablc mind, there to
pasture for number of years, and to get his growth
physically, travel, engage in business, marry
train mp famy-in fact 10 deport himself IKE
the ordinary mnle citizen. Then when the proper
time arrives when his mind has been strengthened
by business competition. broadened by travel and
filed with facts by observation and general eX-
pcriencs of actual life. this system would send
him TO a college there to assmilate and master IN
two years what the average student under the ola
plan only mperfectly digests in four ms. Dos-
ton saws. is the true and the only way 10 produce
the educated man in the hest sense OF the term
So far the advocates Of the new system have
been backward with exact figures In regard 10
the age when it is proposed TO round up us
students and confine them in the college, we
suspcct however. that when the system is put
into operation, as il surely will be, IL VIII he
fouud that n man is usually somewhat past mid
die life before his mind gets into the proper eX-
pcrcnccd and broadened condition which will
enable him TO take hold Of n college training with
the requisite snap. 1t seems likely that few men,
Congress- and with large families TO support, Will
be got into college before they are, say sixty
years Of age: while Others will no doubt have
reached seventy or seventy-fvc before they pass
their entrance examination: and we suppose that
the spectacle will not be unc Jmmon of Il hoary
veteran OF eighty winters pulling the stroke-oar
in the Yale Harvard race. And the thought OF
athletics suggests many things Will man
eighty years old, let us say, look out Of place in
the middle Of football field trying 10 kick the
everlasting daylights out Of football or fellow
great grandfather occasion demands? Can
man who has passed the Psalmists limit grace
fully take 'em on the bat in a match game of
baseball. with. perhaps. vigorous young fresh
man of SXty-hve in the pitchers box? Will
man DO his best a quarterback with his great
grandchildren looking at him from the grand
stand And how will sophomore who has voted
for fifteen different Presidents look at night
tipping over ash cans and stealing signs? Many
other similar inquiries suggest themselves TO us,
but will forbcar. Yet the questions that we
have asked are important and put them in a
serious spirit We want 10 hear more from the
adyO Of the Boston educational system.