Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876

by Various

We are not concerned in this place with the study of the growth of the German school system that prepares the German student. We have to do with the professor. Although the gymnasium and the university are not to be dissevered in actual practice, the one being the necessary prelude to the other, still we can discuss either one of them separately with a view to ascertaining its salient features.

The German university allows to the professor the free play of his individuality. By this is meant that each professor has his specialty, which he teaches as a specialty and after his own fashion. He has been appointed because of his specialty, and to the end that he may teach it. His salary is paid to him, not so much for what he does as for what he is. It is in a measure the reward for having made for himself a name. His standing in the university is based, not so much upon the number of students that he may attract to his lectures as upon the quality of scholarship that he exhibits and his general repute in the world of letters. He has the satisfaction of feeling that his researches, even the most abstruse, can be brought to bear directly upon his official intercourse with his students. A discovery that he makes is usually communicated to them in the first instance, before it finds its way into print. The neglect to take account of this element of originality in the lectures of a German professor has led to an unfair estimate of the lecture-system. Americans and English are apt to regard it as merely the oral inculcation of established truths. Were that the case, we might be right in questioning its superiority over our method of teaching by textbook. But it is not the case. The lecture is the vehicle for conveying the latest discoveries made either by the professor himself or gleaned by him from the labors of his colleagues. So far from merely repeating established truths, it rather promulgates truths in process of establishment. German university lectures, taken all in all, represent the most advanced stage of thought. The instances are not infrequent where a professor refrains from publishing his lectures, lest he should lose his hearers, who are attracted to him by reports of his originality and thoroughness.

The evident tendency of such a system is to encourage productivity and the highest degree of accuracy. A man who has to teach only one subject, and teach it to such students only as are ready and anxious to receive it, can afford to take the time for being thorough. The tendency of the American system, on the other hand, is to beget a spirit of routine and to check productivity. The professor falls into a way of contenting himself with meeting the requirements of the college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless: we yearn, Alexander-like, for something new to overcome. Our professors are of the same stock as our business-men, our lawyers, our doctors, our politicians. But the spirit of progress, if we choose to call it by that name, has been repressed in them. The spirit of emulation, of aggressive competition, which marks our trade, our banking, our manufacturing interests, our railroads, and even our professions, stops at the threshold of our colleges. There is rivalry, true, between Harvard and Yale, for instance. If the former erects a handsome dormitory, the latter must have one larger and finer. If the former establishes a new professorship, the latter must do likewise. The colleges compete among themselves. But we see no signs of competition among the professors of a college, or between the professors of different colleges—competition, be it observed, in the sense that the individual professor regards his attainments and views as a proper subject for comparison with the attainments and views of another professor in the same branch. Once established in his chair, his individuality is merged in the general character of the college. His time, his knowledge and his energy are subordinated to the curriculum. He can teach only so much as may be fitted into his share of the time and may be suited to the capacities of a mixed audience. It matters little whether the curriculum be good or bad, whether it take in a wide or a narrow range of subjects, whether it be behind or up to the times: so long as it is a real curriculum it tends to prevent the full assertion of his individual excellence. He may study for himself, but he cannot teach more than the regulations permit. However advanced he may be in his specialty, however sincere and earnest his wish to impart the choicest fruits of his research, he must admit to himself that there is a point beyond which he is unable to carry his students. They are borne off to something else; they have no more time for him; they slip from his hold, perhaps at the very moment when he flatters himself that he has acquired some formative influence over them.

If this view of the necessary effect of a curriculum is correct, it will enable us to set a more accurate value upon the so-called improvements that have been introduced of late years in our colleges. These improvements, stripped of the éclat with which they are invested, will be found to amount to little more than expansions and slight modifications of a system which remains unaltered in its fundamental features. New studies have been introduced, such as physics, chemistry, geology, the share of attention assigned to modern languages has been increased, a higher standard of admission is enforced, and the salaries of professors have been raised. But in all this there is no radical change of the method of instruction. The establishment of a chair of physics, for instance, can scarcely be said to enable the professor of Greek to exhibit his attainments more fully. The professor of Latin does not perceive that his pupils, because they are now instructed in physical geography, can be carried by him to a more advanced stage of Latin scholarship. In fact, so far as the older studies are concerned, those which made up the curriculum thirty years ago, they seem to be slightly the worse for the recent improvements. The college course of 1840 or 1850 was a comparatively simple thing. It covered only a few studies, and those of a general nature; it taught more thoroughly and with less pretence to universality; in short, it did its work more after the fashion of a good school. At the present day the curriculum embraces a much wider range of subjects—we need only recall to our minds the introduction of general history, chemistry, physiology and the modern languages—but the time has not been lengthened by a single year. The student's time is more broken up than before: the direct influence exerted by the professor is less. Our recognition of these and kindred facts, however, should be something more than a vain regret for the good old past. All these changes are concessions made to the spirit of the age. Our generation demands—and very rightfully, too—that the sphere of knowledge be enlarged, that the sciences of Nature receive sufficient attention. To attempt to undo what has been done, to restore the curriculum to the antiquated cadre of Latin and Greek, trigonometry, mental science and rhetoric, would be a reaction as senseless as hopeless.

Let us be just to ourselves and just to our colleges. We, the public, clamored for new studies, and the colleges had to meet the demand, because, by force of circumstances, they were the only places where the changes could be effected. But in our praisworthy desire for progress we have not considered sufficiently whether the colleges were in truth the proper places for innovation; whether we were bringing in our innovations in the right way and at the right time; whether we were in a fair way of making our colleges what we seek to make them—namely, centres of learning. To discuss all these points would be equivalent to discussing the question of education in all its phases, from the primary school to the university. For the present we must limit ourselves to understanding and appreciating fairly the position of our professors.

That position is not only a trying, but a discouraging one. The greater part of the professor's time is spent—from the point of view of pure science we might almost say wasted—in teaching the same things over and over again. After a few years' practice his round of hours becomes mechanical. Familiarity with the textbooks and with the uniformly-recurring blunders of each successive class begets a feeling of weariness that is not remote from aversion and contempt. So far as his prescribed official duties are concerned, he feels that he has nothing more to learn. There being, then, no stimulus from without, he is open to one of two temptations—either to rest on his past labors, or, which is far more likely, to keep on studying for himself, but to keep the results to himself. It is not only more soothing to our pride, it is juster to our professors, to regard them thus as men who have hid their lights under a bushel, and also to confess that we, our institutions and ways of thinking, have made the bushel for them and held it down over their heads. It is not every man who has the persistency and stamina of Professor Whitney, for instance, who can toil for years with beginning classes in French and German, never losing sight of his real aim, never neglecting an opportunity of bringing it forward, until at last he achieves the success he has especially desired, and is acknowledged to be one of the foremost comparative philologists and Sanskrit scholars in the world. Where a Professor Whitney may succeed in spite of untoward circumstances, a dozen will probably fail because of circumstances. We naturally look to our colleges for the evidences of learning, of enlightenment and culture. We think of the capital invested in them, of the part they play in moulding the character of our young men, and we deem it a matter of course that they should be continually producing something original and independent. But when we compare them with the German universities—and the comparison is forced upon us whenever one of our graduates goes abroad to complete his studies or whenever we look into a recent German publication—we are forced to exclaim, "What are our colleges about? Are they incompetent, or asleep?" Neither one nor the other. Most of our professors do the best they can. But they are fettered by routine: they are not stimulated and sustained by the consciousness that their private studies may be made directly available in the classroom. They lead two lives, as it were—one as professor, the other as thinker and reader—and there is not the proper action and reaction between the two.

The remedy is as easy to propose as it would be difficult to apply. We have only to convert our colleges into universities, our college instructors into professors after the German model. Let us relegate all teaching, so called, to the schools, and let us give our professors permission to expand into veritable scholars discoursing to young men of kindred spirit. Any one can see at a glance that from the wish to the accomplishment is a long way. Upon some of us the consciousness is beginning to dawn that perhaps we have not even taken the first decisive step. The best that can be said of our colleges is that they are in a state of transition. We have increased the number of studies, as well as the number of colleges; we have established schools of law and schools of science, sometimes independent of, sometimes co-ordinate with or subordinate to, the college. We have also established post-graduate courses, in the hope of inducing our young men to complete their studies at home. Yet every year we see a larger number going abroad. In those days of golden memory, both for Germany and for America, when Longfellow was gliding down the Rhine with Freiligrath, and Bancroft and Bismarck were comrades at Göttingen, an American in Germany was something of a rarity. In most instances he was a man of wealth and high social standing, who looked upon his semester or two as a romantic episode. But now every outward-bound steamer carries with it one or more who, emerging from obscurity and poverty, have saved up a few hundred dollars and are bent upon plain, hard, practical business. "We go," they can be imagined as saying, "because we can get in Germany what we cannot get at home. Your schools of science and your post-graduate courses may be well enough in their way, but they do not give us what we are after, and we cannot afford to wait until they may be able to give it. Some of the professors are first-rate men—perhaps just as good as any we may meet in Germany—but what does their learning, their science, avail us, so long as they are obliged to withhold from us the best that they know? They trained themselves in Germany, and if we are ever to rival them we must do the same."

It is not pleasant to listen to such reasonings, much less to see them carried into effect. But the defect which they bring to light will not be cured by closing our eyes to it and trusting to time, the sovereign healer. Time is a negative factor: it only enables the forces of Nature to do their positive work. But schools and colleges are not the product of the elemental forces of Nature: they are distinctively the work of man as a free agent. If we are free to shape any of our institutions to suit our needs, we are certainly free to shape our educational institutions. By having a definite result in view, and willing its attainment, we may succeed; but if we fail either in clearness of vision or persistency of will, we cannot expect the result to come of itself. The present university system of Germany, which might seem to a careless observer the natural outgrowth of German life, is the result of hard thinking and strenuous, well-directed effort. We should not commit much of an exaggeration were we to call it the deliberate creation of Frederick the Great, Von Zedlitz and Wolf, who dragged with them Prussia, and the other German states in her wake. They and their associates and followers, Schleiermacher and William von Humboldt, clear-headed, iron-willed men, perceived what was needed, and bent all their energies to the task. They emancipated the schools from the control of the clergy, and established the principle that teaching is a distinct vocation, requiring special training, over which the state has supervision; furthermore, that the state should pronounce who is fit and who is not fit for university education, thereby abolishing entrance-examinations, and putting an end to the ignoble practice on the part of the universities of lowering the standard for the purpose of increasing the number of students. They abolished the last vestiges of the scholastic system by raising the faculty of philosophy from its position as a quasi-preparatory course to the others, and placing it on a footing of perfect equality with law, theology and medicine.[³] They removed all restrictions from the Lehrfreiheit, or professional freedom of instruction, while at the same time they preserved the right of the state to control indirectly the quality of university instruction by means of state-examinations for pastors, teachers, lawyers, physicians and officeholders. Ever since then the university system of Germany has rested upon a secure and lasting basis.

Is the course pursued by Prussia to be regarded as a mere incident in history, or may it serve as an example and model for us? Prussia is a monarchy, clothed with some constitutional forms but at bottom a state where the personal will of the sovereign has always made, and continues to make, itself felt in the final instance. We are a republic, or rather a cluster of republics under an imperfectly centralized national government. It is evident that the agencies and mode of reform with us must differ from those that have been employed in Prussia and in the rest of Germany. But it does not follow that the reform itself is impossible. What has elsewhere sprung from the autocratic will of a single man and his cabinet may be effected here through that other force, equally great and perhaps more pervasive, to which we give the vague name of "popular opinion." We know that popular opinion in our country is irresistible. It makes everything bend to it. It broke up the Tweed Ring, seemingly impregnable, in a single campaign. But this popular opinion is not a natural product: it is the work of a few men who devote themselves to awakening the sense of right and wrong and guiding the understanding of their fellows. But for popular leaders like Mr. O'Conor and Governor Tilden, the late Tweed Ring might be in power at this day. Education is not so different from politics but that we can regard it as subject to similar laws of cause and effect. Our present common-school system is an off-spring of popular opinion, as that opinion was created and led to action by a few men. And whether our common schools are to stand or fall is again becoming a question of the day, and will be decided according as popular opinion may be swayed by a few zealous friends or enemies. Our colleges, it may be said, do not occupy the same relation to the state that our schools do. They are nearly all private corporations, enjoying vested rights which the state is powerless to touch. Undoubtedly true, but it is no less true that what cannot be done directly may be done indirectly. The state need not make so much as the attempt to lay hands upon college property or to interfere with college studies. It has only to say, "I, the state, exact such and such qualifications of all who seek to practice law or medicine within my limits or to become my officeholders. I establish my own free colleges and schools of law and medicine, and I proceed to tax all others at their full valuation." There is not a college in the country, not even Harvard, that could compete upon such terms. The state need not even express its sovereign will so precisely. It can content itself with establishing a university of its own, and facilitating the direct influence of this university over the public and private schools. We see the operations of such a system very plainly in Michigan. Not only does the university at Ann Arbor overshadow completely the private colleges, but the "union schools," administered under its auspices, are—to borrow the expression of one of its graduates—"killing" the private schools. We may rest assured that whatever the people of a State or of the United States is earnestly bent upon having, will come.

Whether all our States are to act as Michigan has done—whether we are indeed ripe for thorough change—whether a change is to be effected by direct State action or indirectly by the mere pressure of public sentiment—whether we have real need of a body of professors and a set of universities such as Germany possesses—whether we are to make our higher as well as our primary education non-sectarian,—are all questions which may rest in abeyance for a long time to come. It is also possible that one or the other of them may, in legal phraseology, be sprung upon us at any time. Not to be taken unawares, we have to bear steadily in mind several fixed principles and to disabuse ourselves of one misconception.