By a closer union with the high schools, the colleges may help to fashion their courses, improve their methods, and may suggest the importance of placing college-educated men and women in charge of the various departments of high-school work. The report of the Royal Commission previously referred to, discussing the preparation of teachers for the secondary schools, says: “So far as regards general education, they will obtain it, and, in our opinion, ought to obtain it, not in special seminaries, but in the same schools and universities as are resorted to by persons desiring to enter the other professions. The more attractive the profession becomes, the larger will be the number of teachers who will feel that they ought to fit themselves for it by a university course.” The report further says: “Whatever professional education is provided for teachers ought to have both a theoretical and a practical side.... Freedom and variety would, in our opinion, be best secured, if the universities were to take up the task; ... and, if the science of education is to make good the claims put forward in its behalf, it ought to be studied where other branches of mental and moral philosophy are fully handled by the ablest professors.”
Many colleges are doing much to increase laboratory practice in the high schools, to cultivate the spirit of investigation, to limit the number of subjects and secure good results. In one of the new States, Colorado, the principle is generally recognized that a good preparatory education is also a good general education, and that every high school is, therefore, a preparatory school. The secondary-school period is maintained at four years, laboratories are provided in all the schools, and Latin and German, if not Greek, are found in all. These results are largely due to the close relation in that State between secondary and higher education.
In the second group of opinions quoted, the philosophy is Platonic rather than materialistic or utilitarian. It makes a student a man of ideal powers, possibilities, and aspirations. He possesses a nature whose development is an end in itself, whose well-being is of prime consideration. Liberal education aims to give the student a conscious realization of his powers, without reference to material advantage through their use in a given occupation or profession. Through liberal education the student acquires ideas of universal interest and essential character. He gains a comprehensive view that enables him to estimate things at their relative value, to learn the place, use, and end of each.
That liberal education should remain the ideal of at least a large part of the college course, most educators agree. Were this function of the college not a distinctive and essential one, that department of learning would of necessity be abandoned, and the direct road to practical business would be pursued. Recent addresses, representing three of the greatest American universities, agree that the function of the college is to be maintained, and that acquaintance with the several fields of knowledge is necessary to the very idea of liberal education. They agree to include the field of the languages and literature, the field of the sciences and mathematics, the subjective field, that of philosophy and psychology. In a late report of the Commissioner of Education appears a German criticism of American education, which mentions the lack of linguistic training. The writer says: “The consequences are seen in the defective linguistic-logical discipline of the mind, which perhaps more than the discipline in the mathematical forms of thought is a requisite of all profound intellectual progress, be that in linguistic or in mathematical and scientific branches.” In the University of Berlin, philosophy is a required subject for all degrees.
The conservation of the ideals of the race is largely the work of liberally educated men. Some one has argued that not through education, but through a higher standard of society and politics, will the youth of the land be reached; but society and politics depend upon ideal education and the church for their own purification.
The power of research is characteristic of modern university training and is essential to a liberal education, as giving one the mastery of his powers. Carlyle was not far from the right when he said that the true university is a library. The ability to use a library is one criterion of successful college work. Here the student gathers his own material, uses his own discrimination, formulates his opinions in the light of numerous facts and opinions, and gains self-reliance. It is the scientific method, as taught by Socrates, applied to all fields of study. This is the kind of work that prepares the student to grapple with the practical problems of the day.
The opinion that some portion of the college work should be prescribed appears to be well founded. This view is strengthened by the fact that many high schools are weak in one or more departments of preparation. A minimum of required work in leading departments of the college will tend to supply the deficiencies of previous training. From an inspection of the latest college catalogues it appears that all colleges exercise some kind of supervision over the choice of studies, and many of them prescribe and determine the order of more than half the curriculum. In choice of electives many require the group system, in order that consistency may be maintained and that a definite result in some line of work may be reached.
The line of demarcation between college and university work is a variable, and the problem of definitely locating it is perplexing in the extreme. Many believe they see signs of segmentation at the end of the junior year and predict that the senior year will adhere to the graduate school. There are many evidences that somewhere along the line the period of general education will be shortened, and the tendency to specialize before the end of the college course is one proof that the change is demanded. Historically the college in America stands as a whole for liberal education, but in its later development the standard has been advanced and the period of professional education has been lengthened until the problem presents new phases demanding important readjustments. Replies recently received from many institutions of higher learning, touching this question, show a variety of opinions. One correspondent pithily says, “Verily, we are a smattering folk. I believe both the college and the professional course should be lengthened.” President Eliot advocates “a three years’ course for the A.B., without disguises or complications.” Estimating the replies already received numerically, something more than half favor some kind of time readjustment, to the end that the period covered by the college and the professional school may be shortened one year.