Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/84

 nothing magical about the age of eighteen, or about the fact that the youth has got into a school called by a different name from the one he has left. The real determining factors in the question of the subjects and the method of his study are the amount of his maturity and of his general scientific training.

The details of an orderly and progressive arrangement of the entire course of study during the years of the secondary education might fitly occupy the attention of a committee of experts. Such a committee should be chosen in part from the colleges, and in part from those fitting-schools that are most influential and most interested in the improvement of classical and scientific study. Any plan proposed by such a committee would be an incitement, though not a mandate, to better things. Moreover, it would be likely in time to commend itself to other colleges and fitting-schools not participating at first in the plan. It might result in affording great relief to the fitting-schools, and in largely increasing the efficiency of their instruction.

In conclusion it is well to notice that some such plan as has just been proposed seems to afford the only rational relief obtainable from the growing evils of that system of "cramming" which everywhere prevails in modern education. A "bitter cry" is being raised on all sides, not of the "