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406 colleges are converted into workshops where 'the bounds of knowledge' are widened, their real and greater function becomes restricted, if not forgotten." Dean Briggs of Harvard College shortly after wrote as follows: "Another doubt about the new-fashioned education concerns the abnormal value set on the higher degrees. That a teacher should know his subject is obvious; but the man of intelligence and self-sacrifice who bends his energy to teaching boys will soon get enough scholarship for the purpose; whereas no amount of scholarship can make up for the want of intelligence and self-sacrifice."

Many years ago Arnold had expressed the same opinion. In a letter of inquiry for a master he wrote: "What I want is a Christian and a gentleman – an active man, and one who has common sense and understands boys. I do not so much care about scholarship, as he will have immediately under him the lowest forms [classes] in the school; but yet, on second thoughts, I do care about it very much, because his pupils may be in the highest forms; and besides, I think that even the elements are best taught by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the matter. However, if one must give way, I prefer activity of mind and an interest in his work to high scholarship, for the one can be acquired more easily than the other."

The views of prominent German educators are not less pronounced on this subject – and yet, no nation insists more on scholarship than the German. Says