The C. L. S. C. as a Substitute for the College.
The C. L. S. C. has been called the “People’s College.” That it is indeed a school for the thousands who pursue its course of study no one has questioned. Some, however, of the more exact of speech might doubt the propriety of applying the dignified name of college to an institution of its character. We do not set up any claims on the ground of derivation from the Latin verb colligere, to collect or bring together, for then would the C. L. S. C. outrank all other colleges in the world. Nor do we plead the right to use such a name because of the scores of institutions chartered under the name of college, which scarcely bear comparison for character and grade of instruction with our academies and best high schools. Let us be content to speak of plain, unpretentious C. L. S. C. as a substitute for the respectable college.
The warmest enthusiast for the C. L. S. C. has never recommended it to young men and women with means and opportunity to pursue a regular college course. On the contrary it has been a claim from the beginning that it tends to arouse in many a home the ambition to have son and daughter enjoy the advantages of the college training. But to the thousands of C. L. S. C. students to whom opportunity is past, or to whom it never came for want of time and money, to those and other thousands of well wishers it will be of interest to consider how and to what extent the C. L. S. C. may be deemed a substitute.
It should be borne in mind that the college proper is entirely distinct from the professional school. The former aims to give that general and accurate knowledge and training which prepares for the work and duties of life. The latter is wholly technical in its character. Now, keeping this definition in view and comparing the C. L. S. C. with the college, we shall see that each possesses its points of superiority and inferiority. The college has facilities for taking the student of physics and chemistry into apparatus-room and laboratory where he may witness experiment and illustration of great practical value. The C. L. S. C. student reaches the same facts and conclusions through the cuts and explanations of text-books, supplemented in many cases by experiments of his own, which, though rude, are often the most valuable of all. All that acquaintance with the operations and formulæ of higher mathematics which the college student with taste and talent for such things may possess, the C. L. S. C. student does not have. But the result wrought out through these higher mathematical processes with all their various practical applications are brought to his knowledge. The C. L. S. C. student does not have the benefit of a critical study of Latin and Greek, but he gets through history and the literatures of these languages as large an acquaintance with Greece and Rome. Horace Greeley, when reminded of the impossibility of his obtaining a good knowledge of the old classic authors because of his ignorance of the languages in which they wrote, replied that he did not think it necessary to eat a few feet of “lead pipe every day in order to get a pint of Croton water.” Whatever may be the strength or weakness of such reasoning it must be admitted that acquaintance with the thought and feeling of mankind is the highest fruit of language study. This, through faithful and scholarly translations, the C. L. S. C. student receives.
In the departments of general history and English literature the C. L. S. C. has a wider range and requires more than the college. It has its special courses which correspond with the idea of elective studies in the more advanced colleges of the times. The C. L. S. C. possesses, too, the advantages of all the improved methods of instruction, so far as circumstances will permit of their application: the lecture, the text-book, the question and answer. The student may lose something by reason of the long distance in miles between himself and the author or lecturer who is his teacher, but he is somewhat compensated by the better facilities which he possesses for the development of habits of personal investigation and self-reliance. The C. L. S. C. is not the college but in many features it is like the college. It is the best substitute for it known.
