He that worketh high and wise
Nor pauses in his plan,
Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man.
Furthermore, in attempting to stimulate persistence I believe we must ultimately rely on the rational interest in study which we can arouse and hold. Undoubtedly much can be done to save this interest from disturbance and to hold vacillating attention fixed upon it; but it, and it alone, is to be the driving force. Methods of college government must be reckoned wise as they push into the foreground the intrinsic charm of wisdom, mischievous as they hide it behind fidelity to technical demand. In other matters we readily acknowledge interest as an efficient force. We call it a force as broad as the worth of knowledge, and as deep as the curiosity of man. “Put your heart into your work,” we say, “if you will make it excellent.” A dozen proverbs tell that it is love that makes the world go round. Every employment of life springs from an underlying desire. The cricketer wants to win the game; the fisherman to catch fish; the farmer to gather crops; the merchant to make money; the physician to cure his patient; the student to become wise. Eliminate desire, put in its place allegiance to the rules of a game, and what, in any of these cases, would be the chance of persistent endeavor? It seems almost a 260 truism to say that limitations of personal effort designed to strengthen persistency must be such as will heighten the wish and clear its path to its object.
Obvious as is the truth here presented, it seems in some degree to have escaped the attention of my critics. After showing that the grade of scholarship at Harvard steadily rises, that our students become more decorous and their methods of work less childish, I stated that, under an extremely loose mode of regulating attendance five sixths of the exercises were attended by all our men, worst and best, sick and well, most reckless and most discreet. Few portions of my obnoxious paper have occasioned a louder outcry. I am told of a neighboring college where the benches show but three per cent of absentees. I wonder what the percentage is in Charlestown State Prison. Nobody doubts that attendance will be closer if compelled. But the interesting question still remains, “Are students by such means learning habits of spontaneous regularity?” This question can be answered only when the concealing restraint is removed. It has been removed at Harvard,—in my judgment too largely removed,—and the great body of our students is seen to desire learning and to desire it all the time. Is it certain that the students of other colleges, if left with little or no restraint, would show a better record? The point of fidelity and regularity, it is said, is of supreme 261 importance. So it is. But fidelity and regularity in study, not in attending recitations. If ever the Harvard system is perfected, so that students here are as eager for knowledge as the best class of German university men, I do not believe we shall see a lower rate of absence; only then, each absence will be used, as it is not at present, for a studious purpose. The modern teacher stimulates private reading, exacts theses, directs work in libraries. Pupils engaged in these things are not dependent on recitations as text-book schoolboys are. The grade of higher education cannot rise much so long as the present extreme stress is laid on appearance in the class-room.
In saying this I would not be understood to defend the method of dealing with absences which has for some years been practised at Harvard. I think the method bad. I have always thought it so, and have steadily favored a different system. The behavior of our students under a regulation so loose seems to me a striking testimony to the scholarly spirit prevalent here. As such I mentioned it in my first paper, and as such I would again call attention to it. But I am not satisfied with the present good results. I want to impress on every student that absence from the class-room can be justified by nothing short of illness or a scholarly purpose. For a gainful purpose the merchant is occasionally absent from his office; for a gainful purpose a scholar of mine may omit a 262 recitation. But Smith can be absent profitably when Brown would meet with loss. I accordingly object to methods of limiting absence which exact the same numerical regularity of all. College records may look clean, yet students be learning little about duty. Limitation, in my judgment, should be so adjusted as to strengthen the man’s personal adhesion to plans of daily study. Such limitations cannot be fixed by statute and worked by a single clerk. Moral discipline is not a thing to be supplied by wholesale. Professors must be individually charged with the oversight of their men. I would have excuses for occasional absence made to the instructor, and I should expect him to count it a part of his work to see that the better purposes of his scholars did not grow feeble. A professor who exercised such supervisory power slackly would make his course the resort of the indolent; one who was over-stringent would see himself deserted by indolent and earnest alike. My rule would be that no student be allowed to present himself at an examination who could not show his teacher’s certificate that his attendance on daily work was satisfactory. Traditions in this country and in Germany are so different that I should have confidence in a method working well here though it worked ill there. At any rate, whenever it fell into decay, it could—a proviso necessary in all moral matters—be readjusted. A rule something 263 like this the Harvard Faculty has recently adopted by voting that “any instructor, with the approval of the Dean, may at any time exclude from his course any student who in his judgment has neglected the work of the course.” Probably the amount of absence which has hitherto occurred at Harvard will under this vote diminish.
Suppose, then, by these limitations on a student’s caprice we have secured his persistence in outward endeavor, still one thing more is needed. We have brought him bodily to a recitation room; but his mind must be there too, his aroused and active mind. Limitations that will secure this slippery part of the person are difficult to devise. Nevertheless, they are worth studying. Their object is plain. They are to lead a student to do something every day; to aid him to overcome those tendencies to procrastination, self-confidence, and passive absorption which are the regular and calculable dangers of youth. They are to teach him how not to cram, to inspire him with respect for steady effort, and to enable him each year to find such effort more habitual to himself. These are hard tasks. The old education tried to meet them by the use of daily recitations, a plan not without advantages. The new education is preserving the valuable features of recitations by adopting and developing the Seminar. But recitations pure and simple have serious drawbacks. They presuppose 264 a text-book, which, while it brings definiteness, brings also narrowness of view. The learner masters a book, not a subject. After-life possesses nothing analogous to the text-book. A struggling man wins what he wants from many books, from his own thought, from frequent consultations. Why should not a student be disciplined in the ways he must afterwards employ? Moreover, recitations have the disadvantage that no large number of men can take part on any single day. The times of trial either become amenable to reckoning, or, in order to prevent reckoning, a teacher must resort to schemes which do not commend him to his class. Undoubtedly in recitation the reciter gains, but the gains of the rest of the class are small. The listeners would be more profited by instruction. An hour with an expert should carry students forward; to occupy it in ascertaining where they now stand is wasteful. For all these reasons there has been of late years a strong reaction against recitations. Lectures have been introduced, and the time formerly spent by a professor in hearing boys is now spent by boys in hearing a professor. Plainly in this there is a gain, but a gain which needs careful limitation if the student’s persistence in work is to be retained. A pure lecture system is a broad road to ignorance. Students are entertained or bored, but at the end of a month they know little more than at the beginning. Lectures always seem to me an 265 inheritance from the days when books were not. Learning—how often must it be said!—is not acceptance; it is criticism, it is attack, it is doing. An active element is everywhere involved in it. Personal sanction is wanted for every step. One who will grow wise must perform processes himself, not sit at ease and behold another’s performance.
These simple truths are now tolerably understood at Harvard. There remain in the college few courses of pure recitations or of pure lectures. I wish all were forbidden by statute. In almost all courses, in one way or another, frequent opportunity is given the student to show what he is doing. In some, especially in elementary courses, lectures run parallel with a text-book. In some, theses, that is, written discussions, are exacted monthly, half-yearly, annually, in addition to examinations. In some, examinations are frequent. In some, a daily question, to be answered in writing on the spot, is offered to the whole class. Often, especially in philosophical subjects, the hour is occupied with debate between officer and students. More and more, physical subjects are taught by the laboratory, linguistic and historical by the library. In a living university a great variety of methods spring up, according to the nature of the subject and the personality of the teacher. Variety should exist. In constantly diversified ways each student should be assured that he is expected to be doing something 266 all the time, and that somebody besides himself knows what he is doing. As yet this assurance is not attained; we can only claim to be working toward it. Every year we discover some fresh limitation which will make persistence more natural, neglect more strange. I believe study at Harvard is to-day more interested, energetic, and persistent than it has ever been before. But that is no ground for satisfaction. A powerful college must forever be dissatisfied. Each year it must address itself anew to strengthening the tenacity of its students in their zeal for knowledge.
By the side of these larger limitations in the interest of persistency, it may be well to mention one or two examples of smaller ones which have the same end in view. By some provision it must be made difficult to withdraw from a study once chosen. Choice should be deliberate and then be final. It probably will not be deliberate unless it is understood to be final. A few weeks may be allowed for an inspection of a chosen course, but at the close of the first month’s teaching the Harvard Faculty tie up their students and allow change only on petition and for the most convincing cause. An elective college which did not make changes of electives difficult would be an engine for discouraging intentionality and persistence.