Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/644

624 principles. The difficulty encountered is by no means confined to the higher institutions; it is coextensive with all modes of public education, and is just as palpable and refractory in the middle and lower schools as in the colleges. The trouble arises from the massing together of students of unequal moral and intellectual capacities. Between those of superior and inferior grade, there is an undoubted antagonism of interests and requirements. The management that is best suited for the one class, under existing views of education, is not best for the other, and we see in every school the evils that arise from uniformity of system. For the development of the highest character, self-restraint and self-direction, with free and responsible action, are indispensable; and, in every school, there are those who are capable of this self-education, and who suffer from a meddlesome and offensive coercion. On the other hand, there is the great majority who seem to require external direction and police supervision, and of whom, perhaps, little can be made under any system. Which shall be sacrificed?

That there is a tendency to escape from the low agency of external rules and regulations, and to give greater scope to the principle of individual self-government, is unquestionable. President Elliot's remark, that "the time has come for allowing more liberty to students," is but the recognition of a great change in regard to the best method of controlling human beings in all branches of social regulation. With the gradual disappearance of slavery within the sphere of civilization; with the decline of political tyranny and interference with the individual; with the relaxation of the severities of family government, and the management of apprentices; with the passing away of religious coercion in matters of belief, and with the substitution of the principles and practice of non-restraint for the old methods of violence, even in lunatic asylums, there has been a corresponding change in the school-room; its barbarisms of discipline have ceased, and the question is now one mainly of the degree of supervision. Many evil consequences undoubtedly flow from this profound transition, but it must be accepted as an on-working of humanity, and a phase of the action of Nature. To assume that the forces in play have now reached their final equilibrium, we think is irrational, and to arrest the movement at its present stage we hold to be impossible.

It is now virtually conceded that the highest results of scholarship in the universities are not attained by the coercive drill-system. Speaking of the German institutions, Dr. McCosh says that "at all the universities a few studious youth work with great assiduity and success; but a very large portion are not studious, and take a deeper interest in beer-drinking, songs, and sword-duels, than in careful reading." Such is the outcome of that thorough-going preliminary drill which characterizes the lower or preparatory schools of Germany. The passage of students from these to the universities is regarded as an escape from drudgery, which produces a vicious reaction when the sphere of freedom is reached. At all events, this thorough drill-system is a failure with the great mass of students. It is the same in England. Dr. McCosh speaks of "the ripe scholarship and high culture" which marked the educational policy of Oxford and Cambridge, but this description is applicable to but a very small proportion of the students. Notwithstanding the vigorous coercion of discipline in the great public schools which prepare for the universities, and notwithstanding the supervision that Dr. McCosh alleges in the universities themselves, the number of whom ripe scholarship and high culture can be affirmed is scandalously few. Whatever truth there may be in Sydney