Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/154

 authorities, no one can be called liberally educated who does not at least possess knowledge of (1) mathematics and science, (2) language and literature, (3) philosophy. Philosophy, as it was in Greece and as it is in Germany, may become a larger factor in our American education.

There is another tendency which is working toward an inevitable result. The average American student who desires higher or professional education will not spend four years in high school, four years in college, and three or four years in a graduate or professional school. There is a movement to shorten in some manner the whole course of education. Already many colleges and collegiate departments of universities offer electives that will count for one or two years of law, medicine, or theology. Already the university system in the form of group electives is introduced into the last two years of college.

The outcome will probably be a gradual reorganization of the high-school studies and those of the first two or three years of college. The new curriculum should lay for the student a broad and firm foundation in knowledge and power for all subsequent aptitudes. Upon this should be built the graduate school, the professional school, and perhaps the school of technology. In this plan the American college need not be lost, for the bachelor's degree could be granted for a given amount of work beyond the college in the graduate school. The claim that the student should begin university work almost anywhere along the line of education, before laying a complete foundation for a specialty, appears absurd. It may be added that only by partial reorganization of our educational system can the admission standard