Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/105

Rh essence of the new education is constructive individualism. Its purpose is to give to each young man that training which will make a man of him. Not the training which a century or two ago helped to civilize the mass of boys of that time, but that which will civilize this particular boy. The main reason why the college students of to-day are twenty times as many as twenty years ago is that the college training now given is valuable to twenty times as many men as could be reached or helped by the narrow courses of twenty years ago.

In the university of to-day the largest liberty of choice in study is given to the student. The professor advises, the student chooses, and the flexibility of the courses makes it possible for every form of talent to receive proper culture. Because the college of to-day helps ten times a? many men as that of yesterday could hope to reach it is ten times as valuable. This difference lies in the development of special lines of work and in the growth of the elective system. The power of choice carries the duty of choosing rightly. The ability to choose has made a man out of the college boy and has transferred college work from an alternation of tasks and play to its proper relation to the business of life. Meanwhile the old ideals have not risen in value. If our colleges were to go back to the cut-straw of medievalism, to their work of twenty years ago, their professors would speak to empty benches. In those colleges which still cling to these traditions the benches are empty today, or filled with idlers.

I do not mean to condemn the study of the ancient classics and mathematics which made almost the whole of the older college course. These studies must always have their place, but no longer an exclusive place. The study of the language and literature of Greece still ranks with the noblest efforts of the human intelligence. For those who can master it Greek gives a help not to be obtained in any other way. As Thoreau once observed, those who would speak of forgetting the Greek are those who never knew it. But without mastery there is no gain of strength. To compel all men and boys of whatever character or ability to study Greek is in itself a degradation of Greek, as it is a hardship to those forced to spend their strength where it is not effective. There are other forms of culture better fitted to other types of man, and the essential feature lies in the strength of mastery.

The best education for a young woman is surely not that which has proved unfit for the young man. She is an individual as well as he, and her work gains as much as his by relating it to her life. But an institution which meets the varied needs of varied men can also meet the varied needs of the varied women. The intellectual needs of the two classes are not very different in many important respects. In so far as these are different the elective system gives full play for the expression