CRITICISMS.
BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
The “Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle,” with the general Chautauqua movement, has had its share of criticism. Its advantages have been pointed out, and sometimes magnified. Its managers have had their attention called to the dangers and defects of the system. Personally, I enjoy adverse criticism and the practical counsel which it has brought quite as much as words of praise, for praise may paralyze effort, while the goad of the critic is likely to stimulate both ingenuity and resolution.
The members of the C. L. S. C. have from the beginning been encouraged to express freely to the Superintendent of Instruction their dissatisfaction with either text-books or methods. As a result of this freedom, vigilance has been promoted, and many improvements have been from time to time introduced.
The aims of the C. L. S. C. are unique. The provision of text-books precisely adapted to these unique aims has been one of the ever-present problems. If our readers were children in the school room, and daily recitations were practicable, it would be easy to find suitable text-books on every subject in the curriculum. If these readers were chiefly high school or college graduates desiring advanced courses of reading, it would be comparatively easy to provide standard works written by specialists for specialists, and assuming on every page a large measure of knowledge already possessed by the reader. If it were the aim of the C. L. S. C. to study one subject at a time, and that for a long time, exhaustively, from its alphabet to its “last word,” it would not be difficult to find numerous text-books on that subject adapted to every variety of capacity and attainment.
The C. L. S. C. is not, however, designed for school children, nor for advanced readers, nor for specialists. It has enrolled but few names of members under eighteen years of age. Its members are “out of school.” It rejoices in thousands of college graduates, but these take up its readings not for advanced study as post-graduates, but to review under favorable conditions the scholastic studies of former years, and in some cases, perchance, to make amends for carelessness and superficiality during those years of unappreciated opportunity.
The C. L. S. C. is therefore a “school of reading at home” for college graduates who desire, whatever the motive, to review the college course, and for people who, having been deprived of early educational opportunity, desire by a general course of reading to place themselves in sympathy with the school and college world; to know something of the educational courses now being pursued by their children; to test their own powers by a survey of the varied field of letters, and thus by our four years’ superficial course of reading prepare for special studies further on. The C. L. S. C. aims to provide, therefore, first for the four years’ general course, and afterward for the special studies.
The scope of the four years’ course is the usual college curriculum. With this aim we began. To this aim we adhere. The success of the scheme in promoting intellectual quickening and activity has been attested by thousands who have tried it for several years.