The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-06-07
UNFOLDING THE CLASSICS.

The plan of the Rockefeller Foun-
dation to omit the study of the classics
from it's experimental school has
brought forth a vigorous protest from
men prominent in all walks of life
What is called a classical confer
ence" was held at Princeton last week
Statements from, President Wilson
and ex-Presidents Roosevelt and Taft
were read in defence of the study of
the classics. and addresses were deliv-
cred Thy Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
Fairfax Harrison. chairman of the
committee on national defence of the
American Railway association; Alba B.
johnson, president of the Baldwin Lo-
connective Works; Lewis Buckley Still
well of the national research coun-
Gil, and Charles H. Herty, former
president of the American Chemical
society.
Any effort to eliminate the classics
from the schools will be frowned upon
by all those who believe that educa-
ton should include something more
than methods of making money. In
defence of the classics, and citing Ger
many as horrible example of ma
| terialism gone mad, Senator Lodgc
said in part:
Until within fifty years broadly sneak
ing, the acceptance of the classics as the
foundation and essential condition of the
higher education was unquestioned and
the note of all discussion was that Of
praise and admiration. Now the position
of those who uphold classical education
| Is defensive; the friends of the classics
| are contending for the very existence of the
/ learning which they love. There has come
| a vast change in the attitude toward the
"humanities" of those who guide educa-
! tion. Is this change and the consequent
assaults upon the classics Justified? Is
| it not being carried to a most injurious
extreme?
, This comparatively recent and very ex-
IRENE hostility to the classics, to the
| studies which lifted modern civilization
out of the darkness that followed the fall
of the Roman Empire and which for
nearly five hundred years was the founda-
| tion and the test of the higher education
seems to deserve examination. Before the
classics are relegated to a few scholars.
| philologists and lovers of literature let us
inquire whether it is wise thus to sentence
! them to Punishment In making this in
quiry it is well to begin with the funda-
mental questions as to what education is
in the last analysis.
| The first and dominant object of all
| education is to teach the child. the boy
| or girl, to use his her mind: that is
I'm other words, to teach them so to CON
troll their minds that they can apply them
to any subject of study and especially to
| a subject which it is a duty, and not a
pleasure, to master and understand When
this power to use and control the mind is
once thoroughly attained. the boy or Cir
can then learn anything which his or her
mind is capable of receiving and acquiring
| have become very skeptical as to the
wisdom which would cast the literature
of Greece and Rome upon the dust-heaps
when I have contemplated the perform
ances Of the most adversely and mos
thoroughly educated people in the world
from whom we have so largely borrowed
in the way of education when | have
seen that people develop to the highes
point the science of destroying human
lives, as, perhaps was to have been ex
pected; when 1 have seen them produc,
an organized barbarism far surprising il
its savage efficiency any that has eve
afflicted the world; when l have witnessed
the deeds wrought by the products of tn
most modern and improved methods o
education which surpass in wanton de
= structiOn. in equally wanton cruelty, il
sheer naked horror, anything which his
tory can show; when l have beheld al
this l have seriously doubted whethe
: the most modern education has been quit
such complete success as its advocate
assert