Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/775

 SHORTENING THE COLLEGE COURSE 755

guidance all the help, all the light, all the wisdom, that can be obtained from any source. There is no other way by which we may conserve what has already been accomplished, and which will enable us to keep on subjugating, so to speak, ever larger domains of our environments, moral, intellectual, and physical.

Doubtless much can be accomplished in the direction of economy in our educational methods by cutting out work wh'ch is of relatively little value. To require of one who aspires to the practice of medicine long years of study of a dead language, for instance, is of doubtful expediency, to say the least. The problem of the comparative worth of the various branches of instruction is far from being satisfactorily solved yet, but still it seems highly probable that there are in our curricula today sub- jects that, while of considerable account in themselves for certain people, are nevertheless not worth the time and energy which are spent upon them by the great body of students. But even if all such comparatively worthless stuff should be banished from the schools, there would still remain enough, and more than enough, bearing directly upon the work of the physician, for instance, and which he gets but a taste of now as things go, to occupy him probably for a longer period than he at present gives to his preparation, not to speak of shortening this period. An engineer, in order to understand the modern engine in all its complexity, realizes that he must trace its evolution from its simplest begin- nings to its present stage of development ; and how much more essential it is that the physician, in order to comprehend this well-nigh infinitely complicated machine, the human body, should trace its evolution throughout ancestral history, seeking to dis- cover how the whole has been elaborated, and what function has been assigned to each part ! Is it too much to say that no youth should be allowed to hang out his shingle until he has mastered all that is known regarding the general plan and the details of con- struction of the human organism, until, as Voltaire urged, "hav- ing studied nature from his youth, he knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, and the remedies which will benefit it"? But there are men practicing among us who