Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/159

 THE EDUCATIONAL PLAN 131 activity. If only those who experiment will be quick to discard that which shows itself to be wrong, the cause of education has nothing to fear from experi- ment. The educational plan of the new University was President Harper's creation. The above statement makes two things clear. In the first place, he was thoroughly convinced that he had organ- ized an institution of a distinctly new type, differing in important respects from all others. But, in the second place, he considered it an educational experiment. It had to prove itself good. It had done so, in a measure, during the first year, but only in a measure. One year was not long enough to test it with thorough- ness. Whether there would be weak points in the plan, and, if so, what these would prove to be, could be better answered ten or twenty years later. Had President Harper lived to make a statement as to the practical working of his educational scheme during the twenty-five years which this history reviews, he could have spoken with justi- fiable satisfaction of the large success of the plan as a whole, but he would also have been quick to acknowledge that some features of it had required modification, perhaps that some had been supplanted by better things. If, therefore, a similar course is taken in this discussion of his educational plan, it will be understood to be not a criticism of that plan, but a historical presentation of it and a review of its practical development. In the December, 1893, Convocation statement the President spoke of the University as "an institution in which a score or more of new educational experiments are being tried." The things that finally drew Dr. Harper to Chicago were two: first, the open- ing of the way to create a university instead of a college; and, second, and perhaps particularly, the opportunity to organize the University of Chicago on a new plan. He had a mind unusually hospitable to new views of things. He welcomed them, and if, after examination, they commended themselves as true and important, he was eager to see them tried out in some practical way. Pro- fessor Tufts, in writing of an interview between Dr. Harper and himself at the end of December, 1890, says: Dr. Harper talked freely about his general hopes and plans, and among other things said this, which remains in my memory: "I sometimes wish that