Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/28

 be in a very inchoate and unformed condition. By the primary education we will understand such as, whether gained in public or private schools, deals with the most common and elementary subjects, and is not designed in itself to fit the pupil for the higher education. By the secondary education we will understand such as is expressly designed in preparation of the higher education; this will include those courses in the best high-schools and academies which fit pupils to enter the colleges and first-rate scientific schools of the country. These latter (excluding all merely technical schools) give what is entitled to be called the "higher" education. Beyond all this lies so much of the more strictly university education as is mingled with the later years of the higher education, or is taught in so-called "graduate" courses or in professional schools, so far as the latter are conformed to the university idea. It will appear in the sequel that one difficult problem connected with the development of the American university concerns the right separation of the higher education into the two parts of which it has actually come to consist, so that, by combining one of these parts with the secondary education as it now exists, we may gain a broad and solid foundation upon which to build the university education. The university part of the higher education as it now exists will, of course, then have to be joined with the other