Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/773

 SHORTENING THE COLLEGE COURSE 753

tion will make additions on its own account, to the sum of the accomplishments which it inherits, and will care for its successor until it has gained the whole ; and so the plan works on and progress is made.

Now, no one will maintain that the sophomore in our col- leges, as he exists among us, masters anywhere near all the achievements of the race in any field ; and if we go to turning him out into practical life with this equipment, we shall soon get to the end of our rope. Suppose he spends three years more in the study of some profession law, or medicine, or engineering will this give him time to reach the summit of human evolu- tion in any direction ? Can the physician acquire all that is known about his science, and gain all the skill in applying it to concrete cases that anyone possesses, in five years' application beyond the high school ? There ought to be no particular diffi- culty in finding a true answer to this question. Take the testi- mony of those whose business it is to supply society with doctors of medicine; what do they say? They declare that, on the whole, young men, even college graduates, do not know enough when they get hold of them, and they cannot keep them under edu- cational influences long enough for them thoroughly to acquire even the fundamental principles of medicine. Every important medical school desires its students to have the equivalent of at least a four-year college course before they knock at its doors for admission. And then, of course, after they get in, since every year sees important developments in the field of medicine, there is demanded a continually lengthening period of probation. The more that becomes known about the human body, and the way to treat it to keep it in health, and to restore it to this con- dition when it becomes diseased, the longer it will take the indi- vidual to acquire this knowledge. And if provision is not made for extending the learning period, it needs no unusual insight to discern the outcome in the long run. A youth who is permitted to discharge the function of physician in any community before he has possessed himself of the knowledge and skill that his predecessors developed strikes the welfare of that community a death-blow ; and if this practice should continue, it would be only