part in what he has to say regarding the "inherited qualities of the college student"; but I think that all teachers of mathematics will agree that not all pupils have inherited any great aptness for mathematics, while it is equally certain that some of them have this aptitude. For one, this study might have little educational value; for another, the greatest. I pass by the question whether a student should study that which is easy for him or that which is difficult. Either answer fits this argument. Educational values, then, may not be estimated with any degree of accuracy without reference to both the manner of teaching and the individual aptitude of the student. The ideal college curriculum would be, not a fixed one, but one that could be fitted to the varying needs of the individual students; so that each one could best bring out what is in him. I wish to be understood broadly. While colleges are especially to give intellectual culture, we may with propriety extend the word to include development in other lines. If a man has but little aptitude for book-learning or scholarship in any line, as we commonly use the word, but has a gift for woodcraft or horse-training, and has developed his powers to the best advantage, so that he is doing for society the best of which he is capable, I see no reason why he should not have his culture recognized. If he has the sincerity and courtesy that I spoke of before as evidence of moral training, I do not know why he is not the equal in culture of the man who has spent the same time and mental energy and who has attained the same degree of development in mathematics. The college curriculum should include first those studies that seem best fitted to the mental development of the greatest number that will take advantage of them, and should then be extended as far to suit the needs of lesser numbers as the means of the institution will permit. I know of no reason why it should stop short of teaching those whose best life work lies in horse-training to develop their skill, their powers, their natural endowments in this direction in the best possible way, provided the means hold out. Let me not be misunderstood as advocating technical courses for merely tech nical purposes in a college curriculum. I simply mean to make it clear that the diversity of human nature should be recognized as far as is practicable in our college courses, in order that the best culture may be given to each student that he is capable of receiving. Further than that, let us recognize the fact that the educational value of any study is only relative; that no study or series of studies is adapted to all, but that the most that we can say is, that if this study is taught in such a way, it is adapted to develop certain named qualities in a student. If then an individual student needs such a development, let him take this study; but if he needs another development, give him another subject suited to his needs. Or, in many cases, it will be sufficient to have the same subject taught in different ways to meet different needs. But, let me repeat, the purpose of it all is the best development that each student is capable of receiving. So, too, we cannot well speak absolutely of quantity of educational values, but rather of the kind of educational value. We may not say geometry has more educational value than political economy, or vice versa; though we may say geometry is better adapted for training in accurate deductive reasoning perhaps. This might lead us to say also, perhaps, in a specific case, that geometry has more educational value for this boy than political economy; while at the same time we should probably be compelled to say of another boy in the same college that political economy has more educational value for him than has geometry. Again, we may say that when we have studied college students with especial reference to the kind, rather than the amount, of development that they need, we may say this study has more educational value for American college students as a whole, because more of them need it, than has that study. Our college curricula, then, will first offer facilities for those studies that will, on this basis, as was intimated before, meet the needs of most students. When means are small, if college officers are wise, they will not try to offer a little of everything, but to make some one or two courses-those that in their territory are likely to do the most good-thorough, with supple Students mentary elementary courses that all must have. that need different training should go to another college that is offering some other especially strong course in the line of their needs, or else to a large wealthy one that offers many such courses. Though my reasons for my opinion are materially different from those given by Professor Patten, as has been seen, I still expect to see a somewhat similar evolution of the college curriculum, yet with an important difference. The difference lies in this, that instead of speaking of "the college course" with the moral sciences occupying a "prominent and perhaps a dominant place" in it, I should rather speak of, and I expect to see rather, co-ordinated college courses in ' more of which the social sciences will have a prominent, and even in many, the dominant part, than in the courses of the past. I should not say with him, "Complete courses, making the student a master of what he studies, must be given only in graduate work," unless by "complete course" is meant a specialty which one expects to make his life-work, and not then if it be one that has equal value in developing the student's powers. I rather believe for the reasons already given that every college degree should signify that its holder has had a training in at least one subject so thorough and complete as to arouse in him a permanent interest and make him capable of going ahead alone into independent work in that line with a reasonable degree of certainty that fruitful results will follow. I agree with him that the social sciences form, for many, and an increasing number, “an ideal group." As they are developed, and as society increases in complexity, and also in refinement and righteousness, while mathematics, the languages, and the natural sciences will always have their place, and that a large one, in the college curriculum, I think that many more students than at present will find their delight and their development in the study of those sciences that deal perhaps more directly with all that is highest and best in man and society. JEREMIAH W. JENKS. CORNELL UNIVERSITY, II. ON TEACHING THE EFFECTIVE USE OF ENGLISH. No accomplishment excels a thorough mastery of English. Those who have acquired it are the most cultivated and scholarly men and women of our age. This superiority frequently passes unnoticed; for it has a certain subtle quality like the delicate odor of roses. On reading or listening to the best English, we never think of the form of expression; and not till afterward, when the clearness of our conception reveals itself, do we notice the beauty and the appropriateness of the language. To use English appropriately, elegantly, and forcibly, implies not only a thorough knowledge of the language itself, but also a broad culture. It implies both connected, logical thought, and the ability to clothe the thought, grammatically, rhetorically, and connectedly, in fit language. A style as massive and majestic as that of Burke or Macaulay renders any man immortal. The grace of Irving and the copious fluency of Scott fascinate the reader; and the power to write with the elegance of Mr. George William Curtis, President Eliot, or Colonel Higginson, would reconcile almost anybody to being a Mugwump. The power to use the English language perfectly cannot be attained in the early years of life. It comes only with mature discipline and ripe scholarship. But the power to use the English language well, that is to employ the language appropriate to the degree of advancement in thought and culture, to suit the expression to the thought and the thought to the expression, in all the elegance of the simplicity of our noble mother tongue, should be trained simultaneously with the developing faculties of the child. And if this development is natural and correct, nothing once learned will ever need to be unlearned. The language of the child, grown to a larger stature, will be the language of the man; the early English will be the foundation, the bed-rock, so to speak, of the later English. Accordingly the best writers exhibit their most effective style when they write from the plane of the child's understanding. Hawthorne's Tales of a Grandfather, for example, present historical truth, in a most impressive way, to grown people as well as to children; and his Wonder Book, by the simplicity and directness of its narrative, reveals the ancient fables, legends, and myths, to the minds of both youths and adults, much more vividly than the more elaborate styles in which these tales are usually expressed. But Hawthorne probably did not acquire the power of expressing himself with this forceful simplicity till after he had gone through the whole gamut of a more pretentious style, and had sounded all the shallows and quicksands of so-called elegant writing. By long use of an artificial and more or less stilted form of expression, and by perceiving the weakness of such a style, I apprehend, he rose to the grandeur of this elegant and effective simplicity and directness; for such is the road by which most of our best writers have acquired a masterly use of the language. My contention is that this style ought to be acquired directly, and not in this roundabout way; and that in the man, it should grow naturally from his childhood's speech. To know the fine shades of meaning conveyed by the different forms of expression, and by the several words employed and their location in the sentence, requires a careful study both of the language itself and of the thought it conveys; and to understand thoroughly how these fine shades take on different colors when the expression is slightly modified-by changing from the active to the passive or the reverse, for example, or by the rearrangement of words and expressions, and by the substitution of other words-this requires both a wide range of reading and an exhaustive study of the subject-matter treated in the literature. It is my present purpose to indicate, partially at least, the way in which this end may be accomplished an end too little thought of in conducting our schools. |