Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/99

 it proposes. But Professor Palmer advances the statistical proofs that in very truth the method has already wrought to this desirable and noble end at Harvard. We are brought around, then, to his statistics in our effort to come into the fullest possible sympathy of view with his opinions. Do the statistics show, or even tend to show, the superiority of the method of education in force at Harvard, as compared with that still employed at Yale? I am prepared to affirm that they do not. I am prepared to affirm that, in all the matters which can fairly be said to be direct desirable results of the methods of teaching employed by the two institutions, the figures speak rather against than for the New Education. The various items of proof will be arranged for consideration in the order which seems most convenient, but all the points made by Professor Palmer will be covered before leaving the subject.

Among the various proofs of experience that the New Education is successful we find the enlargement and improvement of the prevalent student idea of a "gentleman." Students are proverbially influenced by consideration for "good form." It is no longer "good form" at Harvard to haze freshmen, smash windows, disturb lecture-rooms, etc. Such things as these are largely, if not wholly, at an end. Now the growth away from barbarous and rowdyish customs has characterized all the colleges of the land,—some of them to a greater, some to