X.

EDITORIAL.

Mr. Gilman has published his sixteenth annual report on the work and plans of the Johns Hopkins University. The financial clouds that were at one time very ominous seem to have passed away and the institution is now happily free from financial anxiety, though large additional funds are needed to carry out the admirable plans that have been made. The students improve in quality as they increase in number. The enrollment has now reached 505, of whom 299 are graduate students, 138 matriculates or candidates for the bachelor's degree, and 68 non-matriculates or undergraduate students pursuing partial courses. The academic staff numbers sixtysix teachers.

Mr. Gilman makes an interesting retrospect of the work of fifteen years, from which the pedagogic service that the Johns Hopkins has rendered in training teachers for higher institutions of learning, is apparent. One hundred and eighty-four of the two hundred and twelve who have taken the degree of doctor of philosophy have engaged in teaching. Most of these have made that profession their life-work. Nearly one-third of those taking the degree of bachelor of arts have also become teachers. Since its foundation, the Johns Hopkins University has received gifts, in money and collections, estimated to amount to more than six hundred thousand dollars.

It is curious to contrast this very rare pedagogic usefulness of the Johns Hopkins and its high standards of scholarship with the lofty contempt for learning manifested on all occasions by some noisy camp-followers in the movement to make teaching a real profession by insisting upon high standards for entering it. They let slip no opportunity of sneering at the universities and colleges, and only tolerate high schools because some of their number derive their support from teaching in them. They glorify the commonplace in elementary education and trot about pinning decorations, in the shape of "pedagogic degrees," on each other, serene in the belief that

they are benefactors of the race and that the traditions of Comenius, Pestolozzi and Froebel are safe only in their hands. In one sense the spectacle is sad, because it represents so much energy and enthusiasm running to waste; in another, it is inexpressibly funny, for it is made up of such a tremendous amount of pomp and circumstance and ritual and such an infinitesimal amount of real service. Something-whether it be force or experience or starvation, remains to be seen-must teach such persons that no professional knowledge and skill is of avail unless it be based upon scholarship. To teach, one must learn. The looked-for improvements in the standards of teaching must come first, if they come at all, from real universities like the Johns Hopkins, which train scholarly teachers, and not from those various and increasingly numerous places that give formal indorsement to "professional" ignoramuses. The ability to use the English language correctly is likely to hold its own for some little time as a qualification of a good teacher, despite the manifest attractions of psychology and the principles of education.

The annual report of President Eliot of Harvard has just come from the press. It is, as heretofore, the most valuable. publication of the year dealing with higher education. From it one may most readily learn how magnificent and many-sided a thing the American university really is. As is well known, Harvard has this year, for the first time, given recognition to education and teaching as subjects of university instruction. In noting this fact President Eliot makes the following naïve non sequitur. "The faculty," he says (p. 12), "in common with most teachers in England and the United States, feel but slight interest or confidence in what is ordinarily called pedagogy; but they believe that skillful teachers should be able to give some account of their methods for the benefit of those who are beginning to teach; or, in other words, that experienced teachers can advantageously convey to beginners some of the results of their experience. The faculty believe, however, that this work to be profitable must be departmental; that the accomplished teacher of Latin must show how to teach Latin; the accomplished teacher of chemistry how to teach chemistry, and so forth; or, at least, that there must be separate teaching of the several methods applicable in the principal groups of subjects-languages, history, science, and

mathematics." This very admirable description of pedagogy does not justify the lack of confidence in it that President Eliot attributes to his colleagues, and is one more proof that Harvard, in the present as in the past, understands the art of retiring gracefully from an untenable position.

Much more is being done at Harvard than anywhere else in this country to make the university study of theology, law, and medicine actual as well as nominal. Not only is the instruction in the Harvard professional schools of a very high character, but the requirements for entrance are rapidly being raised. If Harvard's example were followed, all of the unfit or undesirable professional students would soon be relegated to the low-grade proprietary schools in the large cities. President Eliot notes not only that the course in medicine has been increased to four years, but that a knowledge of Latin, French, and Blackstone's Commentaries will be required for admission to the Law School.

In describing the means to be taken at Harvard to raise the standard of theological education, President Eliot deprecates the fact that in the Divinity School a lower tuition fee is charged than elsewhere in the University, and uses this forcible language: "So long as this is the case, the school will not command the respect that the other professional schools of the University command, and it will not contend, as it might, against the common impression that members of the clerical profession are semi-pauperized-in their early years by the habit of accepting complete support during the long period of education, and in their later, by half-fares, free admissions, gratuitous services from physicians, special discounts from tradesmen, and spasmodic gifts from their churches instead of puuctual payment. The great need of the clerical profession is to get placed on the same self-respecting footing, as regards education and compensation, as the medical profession or the profession of teaching. It should be said, on the other hand, that the Harvard Divinity School is supposed to be the only theological school in the United States at which any tuition fee at all is exacted."

One more paragraph from this interesting report must be quoted: "All the advanced instruction of the University is

very costly in proportion to the number who receive it. The American public must enlarge its ideas of the cost of supporting a university. It may reasonably be inferred from the experience of Harvard University that after all the grounds, buildings, and collections of a university have been provided, an income of a million dollars a year will still leave the university with many pressing wants, many gaps in its instruction, and many fields of research untouched for want of means."

Americans give a ready hearing to all well-matured plans for the extension of educational privileges, and where the intentions are good do not scrutinize very closely either methods or results. It is in this spirit that the University Extension movement has been received here, and there is every evidence of popular sympathy and support for it. Presuming on this, very exaggerated claims are beginning to be made for the movement, and there is a suspicion abroad that it is to be made a source of personal gain. There is also very distinct danger lest, in the minds both of its managers and its patrons, the instruction it aims to give should be confused with a real education. The movement is not new, it is not "university; but it is "extension." As a means of systematizing and carrying further along the work of the old lyceum lectures, University Extension, with its syllabuses, its class exercises, and its guided reading, is admirable; as a substitute for a college or even an academic training, it is utterly useless and misleading.

The accomplished editor of the Educational Times, writing of course from the English point of view, has lately expressed himself on this subject with frankness and vigor. His language is so directly applicable to the present situation in America that it is reproduced here.

Speaking of the attitude of the managers of University Extension toward the proposed Teaching University for London, Dr. Wormell says:

"It seems to us a pity that, after so many years of discussion and inquiry, just when the Teaching University for London is about to get its charter, certain persons connected with the University Extension movement should suddenly, at the last moment, take it into their heads that they and their movement ought to form an integral part of the new scheme,

and, because they are not included, proceed to attack the new charter with considerable warmth. Surely these gentlemen who protest can hardly be in earnest when they demand that we should accept the education which they give-excellent though it is in its own sphere-as either in scope or character equivalent to a university education. . . . . A university education is the crown and top of a liberal general education, and requires that the student should give up the whole of his time for a considerable period (something like three years) to a complete and carefully-arranged course of study; the older universities add residence, under college and university discipline. How much of this does the Extension scheme attempt? At most it gives twelve lectures-the Oxford scheme sometimes gives only six-and then comes an examination, with a certificate as a result, if both lecturer and examiner agree that one is deserved."

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"The term University Extension is a misnomer. teaching is not university teaching, either in general character or in amount, and the subjects are usually just those subjects which the university does not teach to its own regular students. Moreover, looked at in one way, it seems almost grotesque to call that an extension which is contracted to the utmost. We know, of course, that the original promoters explain the term to us by saying that their aim is to extend, beyond the bounds of the university itself, teaching of the same highly intellectual and learned character as that which is given to the students within those bounds. But it has not been possible to carry out this idea precisely. The teaching, admirable as it almost always is, has not been able to keep its strictly academic character (we are not at all sure that this is a loss); and, inasmuch as frequently a large portion of those who attend are neither very highly educated nor possessed of much spare time, the general mode of selecting the subject-matter has had to be changed, and to such an extent that we are told that the ordinary text-books will no longer serve, and Mr. John Murray is issuing a series of University Extension manuals to meet the particular needs of the case."

"Let us not be misunderstood. We are hearty believers in the work done under the name of University Extension. We have had many opportunities of examining into its results and