Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/611

Rh and professional work. Professor Tufts discussed the importance of a "reconstruction of the college ideal of liberal culture. . . by a greater introduction of the vocational element and spirit into college work." Professor Royce said:

Our ideas of culture are inherited, primitive and conventional. There is a hierarchy of those who wear celluloid collars, those with linen collars and those with non-detachable collars. Each class looks down on that below it; but scarcely considers what the wearing of a collar symbolizes. He carries a non-detachable collar who believes that American college students must be forced "to study a little of everything, for if not there is no certainty that they will be broadly cultivated." There are various kinds of culture nowadays—microbes propagating in gelatine, turnips with twenty tons of manure to the acre, and boys at Harvard studying a little of everything.

As a matter of fact, boys at Harvard may be compelled to take all sorts of courses and even to be coached for examinations on them, but they do not of necessity study at all. They react normally to the futility of the scheme. There are many kinds of boys in a college community—grinds and sports, scholars and entrepreneurs. One difficulty is that they divide themselves into social cliques when they ought to mix, and are mixed in the courses when they ought to be grouped with reference to their abilities, interests and future work.

The years from eighteen to twenty-five are precious beyond all measure. A boy of eighteen is the rawest of material; within seven years the pig-iron must become steel and the blade must get its finest edge or it will never cut deep. But we bookmen must remember that words and books and scholarship are not the only things in the world. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it is feeble beside the workman's tool. An Achilles who has no Homer is not therefore less great. We who talk and write have undue opportunity to exploit our own trade. If we expect others to respect our scholarship, we should in turn honor their performances. The fundamental fault of our whole educational system is that we try to train to superficial scholarship and conventional culture those who should be learning to do their share of the world's work.