Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/514

508 which lies the disturbing distinction between training and knowledge.

But, if we inquire further into these matters, I think we shall find that the fundamental question is to a large extent one of responsibility. Left to himself, a boy or a man will acquire a knowledge of the things which interest him, even though they be only the arts of a pickpocket, and will obtain a training from experience such as no school or college can give. If education is to achieve the great purpose of interesting and instructing him while young in the right objects, and also of training him for the proper business of his life before it is too late, is it not mainly a question of deciding when and how far to take for him, or to leave to him, the responsibility of what he is to learn and how he is to learn it? If the teacher bears the responsibility during the period of school training, should not the student have a large share of responsibility in the quest of knowledge at the university?

Now, it is of the essence of responsibility that there should be something sudden and unexpected about it. If, before putting a young man into a position of trust, you lead him through a kindergarten preparation for it, in which he plays with the semblance before being admitted to the reality, if you teach him first all the rules and regulations which should prevent him from making a mistake, you will effectually smother his independence and stifle his initiative. But plunge him into a new experience and make him feel the responsibility of his position, and you will give him the impulse to learn his new duties and the opportunity to show his real powers. It is because I feel that this sudden entrance into an environment of new responsibility is so necessary that I would regard with suspicion any attempt to provide a gradual transition between school and university methods.

In matters of discipline and self-control it is possible and advisable to place responsibility upon school children; in intellectual matters it is not advisable, except for the few who are matured beyond their years. It is, therefore, all the more necessary that this should be done at the moment when they enter the university.

This should be the moment of which Emerson says:

The spirit of independent inquiry, which should dominate all university teaching and learning, is not to be measured, as I have already said, by the number of memoirs published, but it is to be tested by the extent to which university students are engaged upon work for which they feel a responsibility. Visit the universities at the present moment, and, in spite of all admirable investigation which is being carried on,