Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/30

20 writing the pupils are mostly graduates of high schools. The principal of that school tells me that the most serious obstacles which these pupils meet in their study of shorthand is their inability to spell correctly. The condition of affairs is well expressed by a parent who, having seen on his son's school report eighty per cent in French and forty per cent in English, wrote on the back of the report for the teacher's inspection, "This seems to indicate that, in addition to any blame to be attributed to the boy, there is something wrong elsewhere."

Is it well to fit boys for college so that they may pass the entrance examination with honors in Greek and Latin, and get conditions in English? Would these boys of their own free will, if competent to judge, desire to offer the maximum requirements in Greek and Latin and the minimum in English, modern languages, mathematics, and science? Have not pedagogues, as a class, exposed themselves to the just criticism of being pedantic, dogmatic, and influenced too much by the example and traditions of the past, and possibly also by their own personal tastes and abilities? Are they at present fully in sympathy with the demand of the American civilization of to-day?

It is foolish to deny that there is much that is instructive and ennobling in Greek literature, or that the study of the Greek language is beneficial to such as desire to study it. Greek grammar is the delight of grammarians, whatever it may be to others. Few or no valid objections can be raised against the study of Greek in itself, and all objections to it are made simply against its being an essential for admission to college. The following are some of these:

1. It is in a majority of cases studied merely in order to pass the entrance examinations, and it is therefore an artificial and for such cases almost useless barrier. Tom Brown of Rugby, who was a typical English boy of the upper middle class, says, "I went to school to get, among other things, enough Latin and Greek to take me through Oxford respectably"; and Tom's father says of him: "I do not send him to school mainly to make him a good scholar. Neither his mother nor I care a straw for the digamma or the Greek particles. If he will only turn out a brave, truth-telling Englishman and a gentleman, that's all I want." Mr. Taine says, "Remarkable words these, and well summarizing the ordinary sentiments of an English" (and he might have added of an American) "father and child."

2. There seems to be no necessity for both Greek and Latin where one will answer every purpose, except where extreme verbal subtlety is required. As a means of inculcating clear and exact views on the philosophy of language Latin is nearly the equal of Greek, and there seems to be no need of both except in