Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/170

 142 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO strength, but this is a danger easily avoided. The law has already been estab- lished that a student will not be permitted to study in the University four consecutive quarters without a physician's certificate that he may do the work of the four quarters without injury to his health. On the Classification of Courses the President wrote as follows : Majors and Minors. It is conceded by many instructors and students that the plan which prevails in many institutions of providing courses of instruction of one, two, and three hours a week, thus compelling the student to pursue six, seven, and even eight different subjects at one time, is a mistake. Whatever may be said in favor of symmetrical growth, no plan can permanently commend itself which compels superficial work; and it goes without saying that a student who endeavors to carry six or more subjects at the same time is com- pelled in spite of himself to do only surface work, unless, to be sure, some of them are utterly neglected and the time thus saved is devoted to the others. .... Hundreds of students and not a few professors have confirmed my own experience as an instructor in reference to this matter. It has been my privi- lege during the last ten years to note the results of work in which the student was given an opportunity to concentrate his attention upon a single subject for eight or ten or twelve hours a week. I have seen results which I would not have believed possible had I not seen them for myself. In order to become deeply interested in the subject the student must concentrate his attention upon that subject. Concentration on a single subject is impossible, if at the same time the student is held responsible for work in five or more additional subjects. The plan of majors and minors, announced in our bulletins and calendars, has been arranged in order to meet this difficulty. The terms do not indicate that the subject taken as a major is more important than the subject taken as a minor. It is entirely possible that the most important subjects should never be taken as majors. The terms mean simply, that, for a certain period of six weeks or twelve weeks, Mathematics, for example, is the major, that is, the subject to which special attention is given, and that during another six or twelve weeks History is the major. A subject taken as a major requires eight or ten hours' classroom work or lecture work a week. This is sufficient to lead the student to become intensely interested in the subject and to accom- plish results so clear and definite as to encourage him with the progress of his work. It permits the carrying along of another subject entirely different as a minor, or, for the time being, less important subject. This gives the needed variety, and the change from the one to the other furnishes what is always conceded to be necessary, a relaxation of the mind. It has been sug- gested that a course in Latin calling for eight or ten hours a week for six weeks when compared with a similar course calling for two hours a week during thirty weeks will be scrappy and fragmentary. This, as experience shows, is a mistaken idea By the plan proposed, the student, when he first