Evening star., 1937-12-05

llSC 10 Lne CLASSICS.
One objection to the new method
Of education which Is bound to be
raised, DR.. Barr admits, Is that it con-
tains very little that is practical That
is, nobody Will be able to go out and
get a job on the basis of some specific
skill he has learned in college. That
might have been q valid objection a
few years ago, but today even the
graduate Of conventional college is
no better of. There are good chemists
on relief. DR.. Bars idea is that the
man who has read Homer and Ber-
trand Russell will master the profess
sion OF chemistry-if his inclinations
run in that direction-much quicker
and more thoroughly than the man
who has taken a few laboratory
courses in organic analysis and has
never read Homer.
A hundred years ago higher educa-
ton consisted chiefly in studying the
Greek and Latin classics.
Foundations of Past,
The specific life objective of the stu
dent was immaterial The prospec-
tive physician was drilled in Homer
and Horace. He learned his medi-
cine-a relatively minor factor in the
practice Of his profession-in a doc
tors Office. The prospective lawyer
burned midnight oil over Aristophanes
and Livy. Afterward, if he saw any
need for it, he might gather smat-
ter1ng OF law in an attorneys office
1t was the same for all the other
learned professions-except of course,
for the clergy.
This way of education was not
without its good points. The idea
was that Greek. Latin and a little
mathematics were disciplinary" They
were the close-order drill of the edu-
cational mill. They produced the
trained mind, which could proceed
to master other subjects without much
difficulty. There is some evidence
that the classical training did, to some
extent, what was claimed for it.
But there were various objections.
The first and most obvious one was
that life is short The system was
we'll enough when medicine, law and
engineering were relatively simple
subjects. about which there was not
much known. About the middle of
the 10th century the bodies of knowl-
edge in these fields prodigiously in
creased. The education of a doctor
was no longer trivial matter. And
so far as the actual practice of med
icine was concerned it didn't seem
to make the slightest difference
whether a man could quote Homer.
1t was rather important that he
know his materia medica. He couldn't
prescribe verses Of Vergil for tooth.
ache, as his forerunners in the Middle
Ages had done. The conjugation oi
the verb "amare" didn't help BARRIERS
itch.
Waste In Detailed Channels.
Another objection was that this
education itself became silly and Pc
dantic. The great stress was laid on
mastering the intricacies of the Ian
guage in which the classics were
written. No attention was paid 70
the content Of the classics themselves
A boy might study Plato in Greek
1t was matter of vital Importance
that he know the pluperfect ending
OF a Greek verb. For the most part,
1t made no difference whatsoever
whether or not he had the slightest
idea of what Plato was writing about
Then came the psychologists with
objective experiments. They discov-
ered-or thought they discovered
that the classics had no disciplinary
value anyway. A boy who didn't know
what Greek looked like, they found
could make just as good marks in
chemistry or German as a boy who
had been whipped a score of times
for failure to memorize the SUBJ
innctive of an Attic verb.
One Of the first educators to break
away from the old sytem was the late
Charles w. Eliot Of Harvard. He es-
tablished the elective system. Let q
boy, he said, take those subjects in
which he was chiefly interested and
which had the most bearing on the
life work he proposed to follow. A
few "musts." like English la, were
retained for everybody. But, by and
large, the student pursued his own
tastes. In establishing this appar-
entity common-sense system, q noted
educator recently remarked, President
Eliot committed the greatest crime
against education in history.
Football . By-Product.
For one thing, he made colleges safe
for football players There wasn't an
institution of higher learning any
where that didn't have enough Snap
courses which might be elected to get
an A. B. degree for almost anybody.
The degree lost its meaning as q
diploma for a standard amount OF
work accomplished.
For another thing, the colleges be-
gan turning out specialists. The old
order was reversed. Doctors began
practicing who had learned by rote
everything in medicine, but who were
practically illiterate in every other
field of human knowledge. It was
(See ST. JOHNS Page C-3D