Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1899-05-09
SUPERFICIAL EDUCATION.
An Interesting Article from Dr.
Hfdeu,S Pen.

Rev. DR.. ]. c. Hiden, of this city, has
contributed a very interesting article on
Superficial Education to the Journal
and Messenger I'm the public mind OF
our day" writes Or. Hidden, there
seems to be a notion that an educated
man should know everything. Now, in
practice, IL turns out that whenever our
schools and colleges have attempted in
any considerable degree TO accommodate
their courses of instruction 10 this plea
SAINT popular delusion. the educated
man'-that is 10 say. the graduate-com-
monty knows nothing"
DR.. Hiden cites his personal experience
al a State institution OF learning, eX-
tensively known and patronlzed. At this
institution he received a diploma, and
writing of this fact, he says;
Said diploma sets forth that the pos
SCISSORS graduated in the full course of
study pursued In the institution. He is
one study, of which. so far as he could
ascertain, there was no professor; on
which he owned no textbooks; never
had lesson assigned him; never heard
lecture, made recitation. or received
an hours instruction. During his three
years stay at the institution, II any
one Of his class ever made a recitation
IN that study, this particular graduate
never heard of it,
But this was not ALL He graduated In
fessOr. to which professor he recited, per-
haps, a half-dozen lessons, each OF which
lessons should have served as cumu-
lative evidence to establish the Irresistible
conclusion that he Ohe embryo 'graduate)
knew pext to nothing about the subject.
He graduated under Stonewall Jackson,
on a book Of several hundred pages, not
one page of which except perhaps, the
title page) did he ever read. and Of whose
contents he Is as profoundly ignorant as
he of the lost hooks OF llNN. III was
not uncommon for young men to graduate
in Latin without knowledge enough to
translate a single passage of Caesar, or
even TO cOniugate the regular verbs.
THE Institution protested, and was
generally believed, to pay special atten,
ton TO mathematics and the physical
sciences; and perhaps IL did. A young
man being called upon there TO enunciate
and demonstrate the first proposition in
Davies's Legendre, Is reported to nave
proceeded thus: IF one straight mark
meets another straight mark, the sum OF
the two straight marks will be equal TO
one straight mark Yet the institution
graduated men with little more Of brains
or of knowledge than he had. one OF the
graduates under Stonewall Jackson IN
optics once said TO me seriously in reply
to a question that halos were caused 'Dy
light freezing up around the moon.
at is true that the institution above
referred 10 enjoys no monopoly or super
ficiality The professors in our theO4ogl -al
seminaries tell us that they too frequent
ly receive college graduates VINO DO not
know enough Greek to hurt them, nor 10
help them. -, - III.
"iThe present writer was in the class OF
the Professor Of Comparative Pnllo.ogy
i'm one of the most famous institutions OF
learning In this country; but | never
made a recitation on the subject; never
heard a lecture. and never knew anybody
who ever did True, we were required TO
purchase a book entitled comparative
pbiloIopvI' prepared by the accomplished
professor himself; and, upon eXamina-
lion. found it interesting and well writ
ton. hut IL is not very eXtravagant 10 say
that it contains something or ALMOST
everything linguistic except comparative
PhilOlogy'
Madison Run, va