Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/72

62 they? They have personally no faith whatever in the real value of any training except that gained by the study of the classics. They appreciate that the scientific course is but a graft on the old trunk, made in great measure for the pecuniary advantage of their establishment, and in response to a popular demand, which they hope and pray may soon find a speedy death. They have no hesitation in proselytizing in the ranks of the brighter "scientific" pupils sent them, for the benefit and glory of the "full rounded course"—in embryo. Here again they are justified, for the preparatory scientific courses are in fact but indifferent patchwork compromises between the claims of the past and the demands of the present. These courses really do give no thorough secondary school work in any one subject, except possibly mathematics. With an apparently semi-superstitious feeling as to the mysterious results produced on the human mind by communion with a Latin grammar, for even a limited period, little dabs of Latin have been introduced into these courses. This study extends in the scientific course of some preparatory schools through one year, sometimes two, rarely three years. With no desire whatever to depreciate the undoubted value, to certain pupils, of an honest, bona fide study of the classical languages, continued for years, it is submitted that these cursory courses of Latin can give no results in any way commensurate with the time expended on them. In Germany the classicists have ever stoutly maintained that any reduction of hours devoted to Latin in the gymnasium course would deprive it of all value; yet they there give to it nine hours per week for five years, and eight hours for four years more. In the Realschulen they devote to it eight hours a week for two years, six hours for three, and five hours for four years. The value that the German school authorities would place upon a course of Latin of three or four hours per week for one, two, or even three years, affords a pretty little arithmetical problem whose solution is respectfully relegated to the designers of these American courses. Beyond this Latin and the regulation four or five hours a week in mathematics, what else does one find in our preparatory "scientific" courses? As but few of the more modern scientific schools or schools of technology have requirements in Latin—and as one and all of them are desirous of obtaining from their matriculates all, and more than they often get, in the way of modern languages—one could properly expect that the fitting schools would afford opportunities for solid preparation in French and German. As will be seen, this demand is by no means well responded to. In the scientific courses of one prominent fitting school consulted by the writer, no instruction whatever in modern languages is given. In the programme of another of these schools—which is also the most modern, therefore lending some