The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

What is the result of this? It is a threefold one. In the first place, popular initiative is stimulated to the utmost, and every person and every institution is encouraged to do its best. There are no formal regulations to hamper enterprising impulses, to keep back certain more advanced regions, or to approve mediocrity with an artificial seal of authority. In the second place, technical education is able to adapt itself thoroughly to all the untold local factors, and to give to every region such schools of higher training as it needs, without pulling down any more advanced sections of the country to an artificially mediocre level more adapted to the whole country. In the third place, the free competition between the different institutions insures their ceaseless progress. There are no hard and fixed boundary lines, and whatsoever does not advance surely recedes; that which leads to-day is surpassed to-morrow if it does not adapt itself to the latest requirements. This is true both as regards the quality of the teachers and their means of instruction, as regards the length of the course, and more especially the conditions of entrance. These last have steadily grown throughout the country. Fifty years ago the very best institutions in the most advanced portions of the country demanded no more for entrance than the professional schools of third class situated in more rural regions demand to-day. And this tendency goes steadily onward day by day. If there were any great departures made, the institutions would be disintegrated; the schools which prepare pupils would not be able suddenly to come up to new requirements, and therefore few scholars would be able to prepare for greatly modified entrance examinations. In this way, between the conservative holding to historic traditions and the striving to progress and to exceed other institutions by the highest possible efficiency, a compromise is brought about which results in a gradual but not over-hasty improvement.

We have so far entirely left out of account the state. We can speak here only of the individual state. The country as a whole has as little to do with higher education as with lower. But the single state has, in fact, a significant task—indeed, a double one. Since it aims at no monopoly, but rather gives the freest play to individual initiative, we have recognized the fundamental principle that restrictions are placed nowhere. On the other hand, it becomes the duty of the state to lend a helping hand wherever private activities have been found insufficient. This can happen in two ways: either the state may help to support private institutions which already exist, or it may establish new ones of its own, which in that case offer free tuition to the sons and daughters of all taxpayers. These so-called state universities are, in a way, the crowning feature of the free public school system. Wherever they exist, the sons of farmers have the advantage of free instruction from the kindergarten to the degree of doctor of philosophy.

Now private initiative is weakest where the population is poor or stands on a low level of culture, so that few can be found to contribute sufficient funds to support good institutions, and at the same time the rich citizens of these less advanced states prefer to send their children to the universities of the most advanced states. The result is, and this is what is hardest for the foreigner to understand, that the higher institutions of learning which are subsidized by the state stand for a grade of culture inferior to that of the private institutions, and that not only the leading universities, like Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Chicago, Cornell, and Stanford, carry on their work without the help of the state, but also that the leading Eastern States pay out much less for higher instruction than do the Western. The State of Massachusetts, which stands at the head in matters of education, does not give a cent to its universities, while Ohio entirely supports the Ohio State University and gives aid to six other institutions.

The second task of the states in educational matters is shared alike by all of them; the state supervises all instruction, and, more than that, the state legislature confers on the individual institution the right to award grades, diplomas, and degrees to its students. No institution may change its organization without a civil permit. As culture has advanced the state has found it necessary to make the requirements in the various professional schools rather high. In practice, once more, a continual compromise has been necessary between the need to advance and the desire to stay, by traditions which have been proved and tried and found practical. Here, once again, any universal scheme of organization would have destroyed everything. If a high standard had been fixed it would have hindered private initiative, and given a set-back to Southern and Western states and robbed them of the impulses to development. A lower universal standard, on the other hand, would have impeded the advance of the more progressive portions of the country. Therefore the various state governments have taken a happy middle position in these matters, and their responsibility for the separate institutions has been made even less complete in that the degrees of these institutions carry in themselves no actual rights. Every state has its own laws for the admission of a lawyer to its bar, or to the public practice of medicine, and it is only to a small degree that the diplomas of professional schools are recognized as equivalent to a state examination.

The history of the professional schools for lawyers, ministers, teachers, and physicians in America is by no means the history of the universities. We have so far left out of account the college, which is the nucleus of American education. Let us now go back to it. We saw in the beginning of the development of these states a social community in which preparation for the professions of teaching, preaching, law or medicine implied a technical and specialized training, which every one could obtain for himself without any considerable preparation. There was no thought of a broad, liberal education. Now, to be sure, the level of scholarship required for entrance into the professional schools has steadily risen, the duration and character of the instruction has been steadily improved; but even to-day the impression has not faded from the public consciousness, and is indeed favoured by the great differences in merit between the special schools, that such a practical introduction to the treatment of disease, to court procedure, the mastery of technical problems, or to the art of teaching, does not in itself develop educated men. All this is specialized professional training, which no more broadens the mind than would the professional preparation for the calling of the merchant or manufacturer or captain. Whether a man who is prepared for his special career is also an educated man, depends on the sort of general culture that he has become familiar with. It is thought important for a man to have had a liberal education before entering the commercial house or the medical school, but it is felt to be indifferent whether he has learned his profession at the stock exchange or at the clinic.

The European will find it hard to follow this trend of thought. In Europe the highest institutions of learning are so closely allied to the learned professions, and these themselves have historically developed so completely from the learned studies, that professional erudition and general culture are well-nigh identical. And the general system of distinctions and merits favours in every way the learned professions. How much of this, however, springs out of special conditions may be seen, for instance, from the fact that in Germany an equal social position is given to the officer of the army and to the scholar. Even the American is, in his way, not quite consistent, in so far as he has at all times honoured the profession of the ministry with a degree of esteem that is independent of the previous preparation which the minister had before entering his theological school. This fact has come from the leading position which the clergymen held in the American colonial days, and the close relation which exists between the study of theology and general philosophy.

The fact that by chance one had taken the profession of law, or teaching, or medicine, did not exalt one in the eyes of one’s contemporaries above the great mass of average citizens who went about their honest business. The separation of those who were called to social leadership was seen to require, therefore, some principle which should be different from any professional training. At this point we come on yet another historical factor. The nation grew step for step with its commercial activities and undertakings. So long as it was a question of gaining and developing new territory, the highest talent, the best strength and proudest personalities entered the service of this nationally significant work. It was a matter of course that no secondary position in society should be ascribed to these captains of commerce and of industry. The highest degree of culture which they were able to attain necessarily fixed the standard of culture for the whole community; and, therefore, the traditional concept of the gentleman as the man of liberal culture and refinement came to have that great social significance which was reserved in Germany for the learned professions.

In its outer form, the education of such a gentleman was borrowed from England. It was a four years’ course coming after the high school, and laying special stress on the classical languages, philosophy, and mathematics—a course which, up to the early twenties, kept a young man in contact with the fine arts and the sciences, with no thought for the practical earning of a livelihood; which, therefore, kept him four years longer from the tumult of the world, and in an ideal community of men who were doing as he was doing; which developed him in work, in sport, in morals and social address. Such was the tradition; the institution was called a college after the English precedent. Any man who went to college belonged to the educated class, and it was indifferent what profession he took up; no studies of the professional school were able to replace a college education. Now, it necessarily happened that the endeavour to have students enter the professional schools with as thorough preparation as possible led eventually to demand of every one who undertook a professional course the complete college education. In fact, this last state of development is already reached in the best institutions of America. For instance, in Harvard and in Johns Hopkins, the diploma of a four years’ college course is demanded for entrance into the legal, medical, or theological faculty. But in popular opinion the dividing line between common and superior education is still the line between school and college, and not, as in Germany, between liberal and technical institutions of learning. One who has successfully passed through college becomes a graduate, a gentleman of distinction; he has the degree of bachelor of arts, and those who have this degree are understood to have had a higher education.

This whole complex of relations is reflected within the college itself. It is supposed to be a four years’ course which comes after the high school, and we have seen that the high school itself has no fixed standard of instruction. The small prairie college may be no better than the Tertia or Sekunda of a German Realschule, while the large and influential colleges are certainly not at all to be compared simply with German schools, but rather with the German Prima of a Gymnasium, together with the first two or three semesters in the philosophical faculty of a university. Between these extremes there is a long, sliding scale, represented by over six hundred colleges. We must now bear in mind that the college was meant to be the higher school for the general cultivation of gentlemen. Of course, from the outset this idealistic demand was not free from utilitarian considerations; the same instruction could well be utilized as the most appropriate practical training of the school-teacher, and if so, the college becomes secondarily a sort of technical school for pedagogues. But, then, in the same way as the entrance into legal and medical faculties was gradually made more difficult, until now the best of these schools demand collegiate preparation, so also did the training school for teachers necessarily become of more and more professional character, until it gradually quite outgrew the college. The culmination is a philosophical faculty which, from its side, presupposes the college, and which, therefore, takes the student about where a German student enters his fourth semester—a technical school for specialized critical science laying main stress on seminaries, laboratories, and lectures for advanced students. Such a continuation of the college study beyond the time of college—that is, for those who have been graduated from college—is called a graduate school, and its goal is the degree of doctor of philosophy. The graduate school is in this way parallel with the law, medical, or divinity school, which likewise presuppose that their students have been graduated from college.

The utilitarian element inevitably affects the college from another side. A college of the higher type will not be a school with a rigid curriculum, but will adapt itself more or less to the individuality of its students. If it is really to give the most it can, it must, at least during the last years of the college course, be somewhat like a philosophical faculty, and allow some selection among the various studies:—so that every man can best perfect his peculiar talent and can satisfy his inclinations for one or other sort of learning. So soon, now, as such academic freedom has been instituted, it is very liable to be used for utilitarian purposes. The future doctor and the future lawyer in their election of college studies will have the professional school already in mind, and will be preparing themselves for their professional studies. The lawyer will probably study more history, the doctor will study biology, the theologian languages, the future manufacturer may study physics, the banker political economy, and the politician will take up government. And so the ideal training school for gentlemen will not be merely a place for liberal education, but at the same time will provide its own sort of untechnical professional training.