Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/80

 stage, therefore, I would have an opportunity provided for a division in the courses of prescribed study. On the one hand, I would have the emphasis laid upon the study of language and of the so-called humanities; on the other hand, the emphasis should be laid upon mathematics and the natural and physical sciences.

But one thing more of this same general kind is sadly needed. Perhaps the most serious defect of the system of liberal education now prevalent in this country is its lack of a truly progressive character. It is full of fits and starts. It is too disjointed and fragmentary. This is partly because there are no settled principles of procedure, fixing the order and amounts of the studies; and partly because there is no power which can secure teachers that know precisely what they are expected, fitted, and permitted to teach. The consequence is that the different years of school-life too much resemble the different successive sessions of our legislatures. Milton somewhere describes the process of legislation as "hatching a lie with the heat of jurisdiction." Fortunately, the process also consists in killing the brood of lies already hatched by previous legislation. Now the process of education in this country is by no means so bad in this regard as the process of legislation; but in certain respects the former too much resembles the latter.