Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/28

18 As to science, our knowledge of that was only in its special application to the manly art of boxing, and we always supposed that, athlete as he was, he had enough of that to meet all the requirements of his position.

The author just quoted further says, "Be the condition of other branches what you please, the melancholy fact stands that the classics are taught in such a way as to benefit only those who by superior talents or inordinately long continuance at school eventually emerge from the darkness overhanging their elementary training." Of his own class he says: "Of one entire half of their long school probation the majority carried away no intellectual memento. Upon that half had been brought to bear the most expensive part of the educational machinery; masters of arts instead of ushers; clergymen instead of laymen; dictionaries and lexicons instead of copy books and slates. There had been no lack of sowing, but there had been no reaping; the ground had been well harrowed and the seed had been watered plentifully and with tears. Many of his associates who had no special calling for a sailor's life had entered the Naval School, with the mere view of escaping a life of Latin and Greek drudgery on land."

The original design of the colleges in America was the training of a learned clergy, and the ancient languages naturally and properly constituted a main feature of the college curriculum. The best secondary schools naturally were classical schools. The heads of these schools were chosen on account of their classical ability, and in these schools the ancient languages were taught by the ablest and best paid instructors, while the teaching of modern languages, mathematics, and science was generally intrusted to subordinates. From these conditions it is easy to see the evolution of the belief that a liberal education meant a classical education, a knowledge of ancient languages and literatures.

The college requirements for admission, the traditions or superstitions of the past, and the inclinations of those in charge of secondary schools have all tended to maintain and strengthen this view. At a time when the only opportunity for advanced study was offered by institutions which made the classics the principal feature of their instruction, it was natural to measure all learning by the classical standard. To do so to-day is pedantic if not foolish. And yet with the prestige of age and tradition, aided perhaps by the somewhat different class of pupils who attend the strictly classical schools, there pervades these schools a sentiment of superiority which possibly enhances the dignity and honor of the instructors therein.

Now, if there is any such thing as a pedagogical hierarchy, at the very head should be placed the successful teacher of English;