Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/122

 in the mathematics and ancient classics of the fitting-school when these pursuits are required simply to get into college through one of these many doors, and are then liable to be abandoned as soon as the goal of free election has been attained?

We are afraid of the effect of the unrestricted elective system upon the higher education of the country. The standard of such education has constantly been rising for many years. The old methods were, indeed, faulty in many particulars,—in some inherently so, in more as a matter of accidental and temporary application. Yet, after all, they gave something that had a definite and tangible value. The new methods, in themselves considered, are better. The new learning and science are, of course, infinitely richer and broader than the old. In order to introduce them to the college undergraduate, however, is it necessary to take everything as respects the subject-matter of his education out of the direct control of the older and wiser party in the transaction, and commit it to the choice of the younger and more inexperienced? If this is to be, how will it not affect, almost disastrously for a time, the interests of the higher education? There are, to be sure, many ways of being educated: there are already many schools giving different quantities and kinds of knowledges and powers of action. Hitherto all ways and schools have invited the choices of the men who