Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/85

 " but of those who are gathered into our elaborate, hard-working educational institutions. Parents, teachers, pupils, all join in the cry. The excessive specialization of modern life has invaded the schools of the land from lowest to highest. There is no doubt of the existence of a certain evil, and of more or less suffering under it. But whence is the remedy to come? Not from fewer hours of study per day, or months per year, or years spent during the entire process of education. Certainly not from attempting to impart a yet more shallow knowledge of the great number of studies already entering into the courses of instruction in all our schools. The remedy must be sought in the removal of such of those causes of the evil as admit of removal; and these are mainly two: the variety of subjects unnecessarily crowded into the few years devoted to education, and the poor character of the instruction.

That much of the school-time of youth is now wasted through excessive variety and injudicious arrangement of the studies, and on account of unskilful teaching, is proved, alas! only too well, by the experience of every intelligent observer. An illustration or two may not be out of place at this point. Not long since, an educated man made the attempt to assist his son in the preparation of the daily lesson in English Grammar. For some time the boy, who was twelve years of age, and