Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/75

 if the generous theory is to triumph, and the highly specialized high-school is to stay, no other of its courses have any better right to remain than those in the classical languages. There is no good reason why a high-school should teach its pupils to dissect cats, to accept Bain's or any other psychology, to read music and draw a little, etc., and at the same time banish Greek and Latin from its curriculum.

The case of the largest and best-equipped academies needs, in the prospect of largely increased demands that they shall furnish a more extended and varied preparation for college, scarcely any detailed consideration. Such schools will probably in time succeed in meeting well whatsoever demands are made upon them. If it should become necessary, they may perhaps develop into miniature colleges with curricula composed of several score of different courses, among which the youths who frequent them, of ages from twelve to eighteen, may exercise their option. That they would in this way really lay more satisfactorily the foundations of a truly liberal education, or even of one likely to fit men for success in the different businesses and professions, I cannot believe. And surely the burden of meeting these new demands would be very great,—too great for more than a very few of the more fortunate fitting-schools to succeed in carrying it.