Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/147

Rh not in imitation of the colleges of England, we should never have been vexed by these things, and never have felt any need of them.

The primitive American college was built strictly on English models. Its purpose was to breed clergymen and gentlemen, and to fix on these its badge of personal culture, raising them above the common mass of men. Till within the last thirty years the traditions of the English tripos held undisputed sway. We need not go into details of the long years in which Latin, Greek and mathematics with a dash of outworn philosophy constituted higher education in America. The value of the classical course lay largely in its continuity. Whoever learned Greek, the perfect language and the noble literature, gained something with which he would never willingly part. Even the weariness of Latin grammar and the intricacies of half-understood calculus have their value in the comradery of common suffering and common hope. The weakness of the classical course lay in its lack of relation to life. It had more charms for pedants than for men, and the men of science and the men of action turned away hungry from it.

The growth of the American university came on by degrees, different steps, some broadening, some weakening, by which the tyranny of the tripos was broken, and the democracy of studies established with the democracy of men.

It was something over thirty years ago when Herbert Spencer asked this great question: 'What knowledge is of most worth?' To the schoolmen of England this came as a great shock, as it had never occurred to most of them that any knowledge had any value at all. Its function was to produce culture, which, in turn, gave social position. That there were positive values and relative values was new in their philosophy. Spencer went on to show that those subjects had most value which most strengthened and enriched life, first, those needful to the person, then those of value in professional training, then in the rearing of the family, the duty as a citizen, and finally those fitting for esthetic enjoyment. For all these, except the last, the English universities made no preparation, and for all these purposes Spencer found the highest values in science, the accumulated, tested, arranged results of human experience. Spencer's essay assumed that there was some one best course of study—the best for every man. This is one of the greatest fallacies in education. Moreover, he took little account of the teacher, perhaps assuming with some other English writers that all teachers were equally inefficient, and that the difference between one and another may be regarded as negligible.

It has been left for American experimenters in education to insist on the democracy of the intellect. The best subjects for any man to study are those best fitted for his own individual development.