Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/652

 of the Scotch universities, proves that the classics are compatible with a very tolerable scientific education, they will need to be curtailed if every one of the fundamental sciences, as Mill urged, is to be represented at a passable figure.

In the various new proposals for extending the sphere of scientific knowledge, a much smaller amount of classics is to be required, but neither of the two languages is wholly dispensed with. If not taught at college, they must be taken up at school as a preparation for entering on the Arts curriculum in the university. This can hardly be a permanent state of things, but it is likely to be in operation for some time.

2. The remitting of Greek in favor of a modern language is the alternative most prominently before the public at present. It accepts the mixed form of the old curriculum, and replaces one of the dead languages by one of the living. Resisted by the whole might of the classical party, this proposal finds favor with the lay professions as giving one language that will actually be useful to the pupils as a language. It is the very smallest change that would be a real relief. That it will speedily be carried we do not doubt.

Except as a relaxation of the gripe of classicism, this change is not altogether satisfactory. That there must be two languages (besides English) in order to an Arts Degree is far from obvious. Moreover, although it is very desirable that every pupil should have facilities at school or college for commencing modern languages, these do not rank as indispensable and universal culture, like the knowledge of sciences and of literature generally. They would have to be taught along with their respective literatures to correspond to the classics.

Another objection to replacing classics by modern languages is the necessity of importing foreigners as teachers. Now, although there are plenty of Frenchmen and Germans that can teach as well as any Englishmen, it is a painful fact that foreigners do oftener miscarry, both in teaching and discipline, with English pupils, than our own countrymen. Foreign masters are well enough for those that go to them voluntarily with the desire of being taught; it is as teachers in a compulsory curriculum that their inferiority becomes apparent.

The retort is sometimes made to this proposal—Why omit Greek rather than Latin? Should you not retain the greater of the two languages? This may be pronounced as mainly a piece of tactics; for every one must know that the order of teaching Latin and Greek at the schools will never be topsy-turvied to suit the fancy of an individual here and there, even although John Stuart Mill himself was educated in that order. On the scheme of withdrawing all foreign languages from the imperative curriculum, and providing for them as voluntary adjuncts, such freedom of selection would be easy.

3. Another alternative is to remit both Latin and Greek in favor of French and German. Strange to say, this advance upon the previous alternative was actually contained in Mr. Gladstone's ill-fated