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GIFT i MAY 16 1913
THE '85 ADDRESS
TOGETHER WITH SOME
NEWSPAPER AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES
DISCUSSING
THE AMHERST IDEA
v»
THE '85 ADDRESS
TOGETHER WITH SOME
NEWSPAPER AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES
DISCUSSING
THE AMHERST IDEA
» » »
> > J
CONTENTS
PAGE
Address of Class of '85 3
A Noteworthy Project in Higher Education ... 27
By Theodore Roosevelt, the Outlook, February i8, 191 1.
The Opportunity of the Small College 32
New York Evening Post, February 25, 191 1, copied in the Nation, March 2, 191 1.
An Intensive College -36
"The New York Times, May 7, 191 1, copied in Springfield Republican, May 10, 191 1.
The Regeneration of the Small College 38
By Harry A. Gushing, New York Independent, April 13, 191 1,
A New Alumni Movement 43
Yale Alumni Weekly, January 13, 191 1.
The Amherst Proposals 45
Brown Alumni Monthly, ]sinxL&ry, 191 1.
Favor Small Colleges 47
The Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, December 3, 1910,
The Suggestions of '85 48
The Hartford Courant, February 20, 1911.
The Amherst Plan -50
Indianapolis News, January 21, 191 1. '
An Educational Opportunity 57
Springfield Republican, February 21, 191 1.
259960
PAGE
Amherst's Opportunity 60
By Benjamin Baker, Boston Evening Transcript^ December 31, 1910.
The Small College 70
San Francisco Chronicle, April 9, 191 1.
The Future of the Smaller Colleges 73
New York Sun, February 19, 191 1.
Amherst a Classical College 74
New York World, February 12, 191 1.
The Amherst Idea 75
SilvcE, February, 191 1.
The Classical Weekly yy
Editorial article by Gonzalez Lodge, February 18, 191 1.
A New Plan for Amherst 79
Editorial article, Harper's Weekly, May 20, 191 1.
The New Opportunity of the Small College . . . 8o
Harper's Magazine, June, 191 1.
ADDRESS
TO THE
TRUSTEES OF AMHERST COLLEGE
BY THE
CLASS OF 1885
The Class of 1885, at its Twenty-fifth Reunion in Amherst last June, impressed by the progress of the College, and profoundly convinced of the value of those ideals which Amherst has ever set before its students, appointed a committee to present to the Trustees the question whether, at a time when educa- tion is so largely assuming a technical character, and when in the universities the work of teaching is to so considerable an extent performed without relations of personal contact and influence between teacher and student, it is not at once the opportunity and the duty of Amherst College to take a distinctive public posi- tion as a representative of that individual training and general culture which once was the purpose of all American colleges. We believe that the College should take this position, as a duty owing to its stu- dents, as an opportunity for a great public service, and in its own interest as a matter of self-preservation.
Twenty-five years ago Amherst had a definite and necessary position in the educational scheme. The courses offered to its students were not different in character from those of other institutions of higher learning, while even in numbers colleges like Yale and
3
Princeton were not beyond comparison with Amherst. Columbia, Cornell, and the host of Western institu- tions had no such position as they occupy at present.
Within recent years the character of education has so changed that the relative position of different insti- tutions, and the value of each in the new scheme of education, have undergone a reappraisal. The great State universities, now so important, take their stu- dents as they pass from the high schools, offering a technical training as a preparation for some profes- sional or commercial career, and so great is their sup- port in men and money that one who has thoroughly studied the situation recently expressed the judgment that "the scepter has passed from the private school and is threatened in the privately endowed college."
Hence have come the enormous demands which Eastern universities without State support have made upon friends and alumni. New technical schools and professional and postgraduate courses have been needed, and for these purposes endowments have been given in tens of millions, so that Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and many other institutions are able to perform the work which State universities perform, taking students from high schools, and graduating them equipped to pursue a technical occupation.
This scheme leaves no place for such a college as Amherst. The high school fits for the university, and the university for the selected calling. Amherst, on the other hand, demands a preparation not within the tendencies of the high school, and gives a course of training which does not fit for, but, on the other hand, postpones, preparation for a calling.
What, then, is to be the future of Amherst? It is without the means necessary to enable it to take such
4
a place as that now filled by those institutions which were so long its competitors. Amherst cannot com- pete with the great universities in their extended fields, and so long, therefore, as we seem to occupy no sepa- rate and distinctive field, we must expect to see the numbers, reputation, prestige, and wealth of other institutions grow while Amherst becomes relatively of less and less importance. This is the prospect which we most unwillingly are compelled to face. Few there are indeed who nowadays go to a small col- lege because convinced that the training is superior to the university courses elsewhere offered. Under these conditions to raise our standard seems impossible; must we therefore be content to abandon our claim to an honorable place in the first rank of American insti- tutions? Is there no distinctive field which Amherst may occupy, no demand for an improvement in the quality of instruction which Amherst may supply?
We believe that there is such a field ; that there are public services which Amherst may render ; that there are already signs of reaction from present conditions, and that no institution can better lead and give form to this reaction than Amherst College.
The popular appraisal of education is commercial, — measuring the value of a training by the income it re- turns,—and if every man stand for himself alone, this appraisal may be right. It is in the relation of the individual to the community, however, that this view of educational training first breaks down. Amherst has never taught that every man stands for himself alone, nor that the value of education is in its pur- chasable gratifications. There is a training which should be undergone for the sake of learning and for the benefit of the State.
"There are in this country," said Professor Nelson of Williams College, "no two wants more pressing than a literature of the first rank and statesmen of the first rank. The two go together. Your great statesmen are bred on literature and the historic achievements of mankind. . . . Those alone have the right to deal with the des- tinies of humanity who have learned the laws by which humanity has come to its present heritage."
No literature, said De Tocqueville, ought to be more studied in democratic ages than that of the an- cients. This, classical training, modified from time to time by demands of modern scholarship, has always been the Amherst course, and the Class of 1885 urge that the College can and should make its work in this field of distinctive value and public importance; that this can be done by raising the standard of work among faculty and students— by getting together at Amherst the best teachers in the country in our chosen field of work and the most serious and able young men to profit by this course of teaching. These three things are the College— the course of instruction, the men who give the course, and the students who receive it.
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION
Amherst has stood for a liberal or classical education, —the old-fashioned course,— and for many years there was in this respect no difference between Amherst and other institutions of higher education in this country. The value to the public of this training in making statesmen and leaders of public thought is
6
even now unquestioned. It is a training in civics, in the history of government, in the development and significance of institutions, in the meaning of civiliza- tion,—in brief, a training for public leadership, not a ^ personal equipment for a trade.
"The American college,'' Dr. Woodrow Wilson said, "has played a unique part in American life. ... It formed men who brought to their tasks an incomparable morale, a capacity that seemed more than individual, a power touched with large ideals. The college has been the seat of ideals. The liberal training which it sought to impart took no thought of any particular profes- sion or business, but was meant to reflect in its few and simple disciplines the image of life and thought. Men were bred by it to no skill or craft or calling ; the discipline to which they were sub- jected had a more general object. It was meant to prepare them for the whole of life rather than some particular part of it. The ideals which lay at its heart were the general ideals of conduct, of right living and right thinking, which made them aware of a world moralized by principle, steadied and cleared of many an evil thing by true and catholic reflection and just feeling, a world not of interests but of ideas. Such impres- sions, such challenges to a man's spirit, such inti- mations of privilege and duty, are not to be found in the work of professional and technical schpols. They cannot be."
Very few colleges follow this line now,— unfortu- nately few, for the old ideas were not all wrong,— but
7
among the few that can find no substitute in technical training for the ideals of the past Amherst has an honorable place. This is the opportunity of the Col- lege, to make it its work to give that sound training which fits men to become public leaders. Institutions and government have a history, and the best states- manship is that which meets the future with lessons derived from a profound understanding of what has gone before us. Technical education, which, so far as government is concerned, for the most part teaches devices but not principles, which seems to assert that successful business fits for successful statesmanship, proceeds upon the assumption that retrospect is not wise and that in any difficulty we should consider not how we got there but how we can get out, as if, said Edmund Burke, we should "consult our invention and reject our experience," Here, indeed, is to be found one of the causes of the increasing excitability of American politics. Invention is the parent of Utopias, socialism, radicalism of all kinds. Experience is the parent of improvement, progress, conservatism.
It is perhaps unnecessary for the Committee to say that in any teaching of the experience of the race the sciences have a necessary place. None would advo- cate adoption of the unchanged classical course of fifty years ago. All would agree that some knowledge of science is part of a liberal education, and should be taught at Amherst— at least so far as to enable her graduates to enter the best professional schools. Not- withstanding all this, however, the day of the classics has not yet gone by. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, a quarter of a century ago a leader in the attack upon the old scheme of education, himself recently said that as an essential part of a college course
8
"I would prescribe one of the classic tongues, Greek or Latin, as a compulsory study to the day of graduation, the one royal road to a knowledge of all that is finest in letters and in art."
Upon the specific question which Mr. Adams pre- sents, or even upon the broad question what at the present time should be the general character of classi- cal training, the Committee make no suggestions. The point which it is now sought to emphasize is that there is a great field which Amherst may occupy, that this" field is nothing less than training in public leadership and broad culture. In this instruction, if Amherst make its position publicly distinctive and different from that occupied by the great universities, she need fear no competition.
The tendency of modern institutions— if we disre- gard their distractions— is to make breadwinners, to fit men to earn money. State universities are neces- sarily of this character, and the influence upon all in- stitutions which compete with them is strong. Size itself almost irresistibly drives this way. Back of this modern movement is the notion recently stated by Professor John M. Gillette, an apostle of vocational training,— his very language marked by the modern divorce from classical scholarship,— that
'The assumption of State education is that its training is necessary for citizenship, that is, to be a valid member of society. But since one can be such only as he is able to function in society, that is, work in society, according to its fundamental nature, and since society is essentially specialized and vocational in constitution, it follows that to
9
make citizens in the best sense is to vocationalize them, make them able to further some dominant social interest/' ^
With Professor Gillette's conception of citizenship in the best sense we need not quarrel. None doubt, and at the present time none need emphasize the fact, that the world needs, and must have, engineers, chem- ists, electricians, biologists; that technical education and trade education are essential to the work of the world; that the vast development of schools and uni- versities in technical lines has been in response to urgent public necessity. For all this we have no im- favorable criticism. The point to be emphasized is that different institutions may well turn their attention in different directions.
The proposition for which Amherst stands is that preparation for some particular part of life does not make better citizens than, in President Wilson's phrase, preparation for the whole of it ; that because a man can "function in society" as a craftsman in some trade or technical work he is not thereby made a better leader ; that we have already too much of that states- manship marked by abiHty ''to further some dominant social interest" and too little of that which is "aware of a world moralized by principle, steadied and cleared of many an evil thing by true and catholic reflection and just feeling, a world not of interests but of ideas." Amherst upholds the proposition that for statesmen, leaders of public thought, for literature, indeed for all work which demands culture and breadth of view, nothing can take the place of the classical education; that the duty of institutions of
1 "Vocational Education," p. 73. 10
higher education is not wholly performed when the youth of the country are passed from the high schools to the universities to be "vocationalized," but that there is a most important work to be performed by an institution which stands outside this straight line to pecuniary reward ; that there is room for at least one great classical college, and we believe for many such. This is the training which Amherst has given, and if now the College were publicly and definitely to stand forward as an exponent of classical learning in such modified course as modern scholarship may approve, we believe that, with its history, its deserved reputa- tion, and its present position, it can take the place of leadership in this work. This once done, the College will no longer appeal for support solely to its friends, but would have reason to expect the efficient support of all friends of classical education— that is, of the most conservative, thoughtful, and scholarly persons. Among such persons the desire for sound classical training is frequently expressed. It was but recently that Professor Trent of Columbia said :
"Perhaps in time certain colleges will be able to emphasize to a greater degree the tried clas- sical discipline and to cease to compete with the technical schools. There is room in this huge country for institutions of every kind, and there are still people who would gladly give their chil- dren an old-fashioned education, that is, a dis- cipline that has been tested, under teachers convinced of its merits, and not hampered by the necessity of defending it against colleagues who do not believe in it." ^
1 New York Evening Post, Saturday, October 8, 1910. II
That Amherst should abolish its present course lead- ing to the degree of B.S. will probably not be seriously questioned. This was once, and perhaps not long since, a valuable course, but at the present time, in view of the courses of instruction given at such schools as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shef- field Scientific School, Cornell, and many others, it seems to the Committee that young men who desire scientific instruction make a mistake to come to Am- herst. That the degree should represent something less than a thorough scientific course of some char- acter, or be used to permit graduation of those who, for one reason or another, do not fulfil the require- ments of the arts degree, probably few would justify. Williams College refuses to grant this degree, and we believe that Amherst should do the same. It is to be supposed that this would reduce the number of stu- dents very considerably, but the Committee urge that the change is one which is due to the College itself as well as to its students.
On the other hand, the classical field we believe be- longs to Amherst. This is the work in which the College may be made a leader. Of course such a posi- tion cannot be taken at once. Time is necessary, and it is necessary that in time the College so regulate its afifairs that it shall be enabled to give the training in its chosen field better than any other institution. The method by which all this may be accomplished the Committee believes is involved in changes which should be inaugurated as parts of a single well- matured policy.
First: Our faculty must be composed of the best teachers in the country for our chosen course.
Second : The body of students and the purpose and
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life of the College must be directed toward excellence in scholarship.
THE COMPENSATION OF THE FACULTY
It is the belief of the Class of 1885 that the profession of teaching is of vital public importance and dignity, and that the compensation offered to teachers should be such as to draw into the profession men of the highest talents and effectiveness. That this is not so is common knowledge. It is well known, as the New York Times states,* that
"The best brains of the country are going into business because in business the scale [of com- pensation] is pitched higher."
We have in Amherst, as there are elsewhere, men who dignify the service of learning. There is no small consolation in the fact that there are such men and in the knowledge that, although the profession of teach- ing is not now drawing into its ranks its due propor- tion of talent, nevertheless, in order to remedy the existing evil, it is not necessary that teaching be made a conspicuously lucrative profession. What is needed is, in the first place, that the compensation be not con- spicuously low. Young men of ability must not be driven to other work by the knowledge that a profes- sor's salary is insufficient to support a family and to enable him to associate with equals on equal terms. In the second place, it is necessary that the position of a professor in a prominent college be made to compare
1 September 20, 1910.
13
in dignity with the position achieved by success in other professions or occupations.
No such condition now exists. The present fact is, as the New York Times recently said/ that
"Many college instructors and some college professors would consider themselves lucky if they got the wages of a union bricklayer. They cannot marry and support their wives properly. Unless their wives have money, they cannot bring up their families.*'
The great injustice of this condition and its serious consequences to the national life need no demonstra- tion. The evil is fundamental. It discloses present social standards— in no other great nation, said Pro- fessor Gillette, do educators stand so low in public esteem^— and holds out an unencouraging prospect as to the intellectual life of the country twenty-five years from now. What is needed, then, for this funda- mental evil is fundamental change. An increase of a few hundred dollars a year in the salaries of teachers may slightly diminish the hardships of a position which is too often humiliating, but it does nothing toward righting a great wrong. What is needed is not a slight increase but a radically new standard of compensation. We believe that it is possible for Am- herst to do something toward remedying this national misfortune and injustice.
The College needs no more buildings and no addi- tional land. Its primary need is a body of instructors of acknowledged excellence. While it is possible for
1 September 20, 1910.
2 ** Vocational Education," p. 37.
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other institutions to call professors from Amherst, we cannot expect, as a general rule, either to secure or to keep the best. To learn the facts about salaries paid at Amherst, the Committee requested information from members of the Faculty, thirty-nine of whom made reports, with the following results :
14 of these members of the Faculty receive $3000; 4 receive $2500; i receives $2200; 11 receive $2000; 4 receive $1600; 2 receive $1400; i receives $1300; 2 receive $1200.
The Dean (one of the 14 to receive $3000) receives $1000 additional for his services in administration. The cases of assistants are not included in the above list, as they are in no sense permanent members of the Faculty.
Corresponding to each of the above classes, the average reported expenditure per year is as follows :
|
Salary |
Rent |
Cost of living |
Books, education of children, travel |
Total |
Excess of expenditure over salary |
Average of last column |
|
)3000 |
$596 |
$2633 |
$807 |
$4036 |
$1036 |
$620 |
|
2500 |
533 |
2000 |
416 |
2949 |
449 |
|
|
2200 |
500 |
I 100 |
300 |
1900 |
—300 |
|
|
2000 |
355 |
1474 |
476 |
2305 |
305 |
|
|
1600 |
337 |
1323 |
638 |
2298 |
698 |
|
|
1400 |
333 |
1335 |
405 |
2073 |
673 |
|
|
1300 |
175 |
500 |
350 |
1025 |
-275 |
|
|
1200 |
290 |
1025 |
362 |
1677 |
477 |
The higher salaries are, in general, paid to men of long service, who, in the natural course of affairs, are compelled to meet higher expenditures. Professors
1 The regular salary of this teacher is $1600. He has an extra allowance of $600 this year for special work.
IS
are more and more, as time passes, called upon to per- form representative duties for the college ; their chil- dren are growing, who must be educated, clothed, and fed; standards of living are entailed which are not necessary in the earlier period of the teacher's career. Higher salaries correspond not to a greater temptation to, but a greater need for, the increased expenditure which appears in the table. With this in mind, the significant fact shown is that at no period during a teacher's connection with the College is his salary sufficient for his support.
If the $300 surplus noted against the $2200 salary be considered in the light of the foot-note, it should enter into the final average as +300. With this change, it appears that the average outlay of the Amherst teacher exceeds his salary by $635. The statistics from which this conclusion is established are based upon reports made in writing by the individual teach- ers upon a uniform blank. A careful reading of the remarks accompanying these reports shows that in many cases the expenditure is kept down to the point indicated only by an exercise of economy to the point of hardship.
Almost without exception, the members of the Am- herst Faculty can live with a fair degree of comfort only as they derive income from sources other than salary.
During the last ten years the increase in the cost of living at Amherst, taking the average of the estimates given by members of the Faculty, amounts to almost exactly 30%.
An independent investigation to throw light upon this increase has been conducted by means of data obtained from the books of Amherst tradesmen. Pres-
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ent-day prices of the following articles were compared with prices prevailing in the later nineties : groceries, meats, clothing, coal, services, including those of do- mestics, mechanics, day-laborers, etc. The results of this investigation (which the Committee has on file) appear to show a distinctly greater increase than that indicated by the teachers' reports.
The gentleman who made the inquiries and tabu- lated the results (a very painstaking member of the Amherst Faculty) concluded his report with the fol- lowing comments, which seem to the Committee to have deep significance :
"When I have indicated the increase in the cost of living based on increase in prices of commodi- ties and services, the story is by no means com- pletely told. The standard of life which a college professor must now maintain entails an increase in expenditure, as compared with fifteen years ago, that statistics of prices do not show. It costs him more to maintain his former standard. But the change of standard enforced upon him by social changes and the sentiments of the college community forces an additional expenditure. Be- sides this, the progress of knowledge calls for an increase in facilities in the way of books, travel, and general equipment in order that he may keep abreast or ahead in the running and meet the demands of service to his institution. Such changes of standard in living and equipment can- not be reduced to statistics, but they are known to all college men.
"So much on the increased cost of living. Let me indicate a method by which to judge of the
17
adequacy of a college professor's income. Some investigation has led me to the conclusion that at Amherst a college professor spends his income approximately as follows with a family of four: rent 17%, fuel 6%, lighting 2%, food 35%, clothing 20%, sundries 20%. Assuming that he has a salary of $3000, that would mean $600 for sundries. But what does sundries cover? Such items as the following: laundry, house-cleaning, kitchen supplies, repairs, such as replacement of furniture, rugs, bed-clothing, etc., doctors' bills, dentistry, life insurance, subscriptions that he is called upon to make and wants to make, support of athletics and Y. M. C. A. benevolence, pres- ents, books, travel, vacations, and the education of his children.
"There are college professors who for years buy no books because they cannot afford it, who for the same reason do not go to the theater, do not subscribe $5 to the musical program, never ride in a parlor-car, never have been to the sea- shore or to the mountains, and never could afford to take a sabbatical year to freshen up their life and their work."
In explanation of the last remark the Committee add that during a sabbatical year but half salary is paid.
Under these conditions the necessity for a change is evident. Some increase of salaries is inevitable. It is true that a small increase will accomplish something if it enable teachers to meet necessary expenses. The great public necessity, however, is that some step be taken toward establishment of new standards of com- pensation.
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We believe that there is but one way in which to meet this situation. If the College were to adopt the settled policy that it would accept no gifts which involve increased expense, were it to announce that its deliberate purpose is and shall be the in- definite increase of teachers' salaries, and that to this purpose it will use all its resources, Amherst would at once occupy a distinctive position among the colleges and universities of the country, and would do something more than her share to restore the dignity of a great profession. Until this posi- tion is taken we must expect to be small workers in a great field, doing what others do, but not so well. When the new position is taken, not alone in the inter- est of the College but for learning itself, we believe that Amherst will represent a great public service which deserves support. We cannot believe that in such a matter this support would be wholly lacking, and we hope that the time would soon come when Am- herst would be able not to make a small increase only in its professional salaries, but to initiate a movement of profound influence throughout the country.
IMPROVEMENT IN THE QUALITY OF SCHOLARSHIP
Amherst is not a large college and has never been influenced by ambition for numbers nor participated in the race for size. We have no desire to use our students to magnify the institution, but, on the con- trary, wish to use all the means at our command for the greatest advantage of every student who comes to us. We have heard alumni of large colleges debate the future of the small college, and we see their class-
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rooms so crowded that instruction is almost impossible and a lecture of an hour a week must be supplemented by two hours a week in which the class in small groups meets many tutors, hardly their seniors. Hence comes the suggestion of Mr. Charles Francis Adams that Harvard, "save in name and continuity, should cease to exist," and that in its place should be "a group of colleges, all independent, ... so limited in size that individuality would be not only possible but a neces- sary part of the system.'' Hence also the "quadrangle system" so called, the "preceptorial system," and whatever other devices may be used to make a large institution do the personal work necessary for educa- tion—in short, to secure for large colleges the in- herent advantages of the small ones.
At Amherst there is no such problem. Here is in- dividual training capable of unlimited development. With a renewed faculty we may start this work, but to take a position of leadership as a great classical institution requires development among the students of a purpose and life directed toward scholarly excel- lence. Such a condition does not now exist. Dr. Woodrow Wilson says that
"The real intellectual life of a body of under- graduates, if there be any, manifests itself not in the class-room, but in what they do and talk of and set before themselves as their favorite objects between classes and lectures. You will see the true life of a college in the evenings, at the din- ner-table or beside the fire, in the groups that gather and the men that go off eagerly to their work, where youths get together and let them- selves go upon their favorite themes— in the
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effect their studies have upon them when no com- pulsion of any kind is on them. The effects of learning are its real tests, the real tests alike of its validity and of its efficiency. The mind can be driven, but that is not life. Life is voluntary or unconscious. It is breathed in out of a sustain- ing atmosphere. It is shaped by environment. It is habitual, continuous, productive."
There are schools which have such an atmosphere, in which a young man finds an environment of vivid intellectual life ; schools which draw a young man into a current where yielding is easy and resistance hard; where he discovers a severe course of mental training whose vigor comes from his associations and the de- mands of his fellows, not from compulsion of the faculty. There is probably no college in the country in which such a condition exists.
"Life at college," Dr. Wilson goes on to say, "is one thing, the work of the college another, en- tirely separate and distinct. The life is the field that is left free for athletics not only, but also for every other amusement and diversion. Studies are no part of that life, and there is no competi- tion. Study is the work which interrupts the life, introduces an embarrassing and inconsistent ele- ment into it. The faculty has no part in the life ; it organizes the interruption, the interference."
No institution of which this is true arouses the be- lief which Mr. Gladstone expressed of the Oxford of his time— that "she is providentially designed to be the fountain of blessings, spiritual, social, and intellec-
21
tual, to this and to other countries, to the present and future times." No institution of which this is true answers the just expectation of those parents who at personal sacrifice, often great, send their sons to col- lege that they may be better prepared for that modern world of which it is said that "it contains an uncom- mon challenge to effort," "and all the achievements to which it challenges are uncommonly difficult."
The life which Dr. Wilson describes is no prepara- tion for this modern world of difficulty. On the con- trary, as Mr. Birdseye says, the college too often teaches "a mental sloth, carelessness, and inaccuracy which are quite the antithesis of good education, and of the business training that the non-college competi- tor is getting under some stern master in the office, the shop, the factory, the store, or other business training- school. For eight hours or more each day, the latter is part of a carefully organized system, a machine that detects his every lapse and fits him for higher respon- sibility. These disqualifying habits of sloth, careless- ness, and inaccuracy, acquired or intensified at college, are often so bad as quite to negative the advantages of a college course, and are too high a price for a young man to pay for what he gets out of his four years." Much too high indeed, for this is but teaching failure.
"Falso queritur," said Sallust, "de natura sua genus humanum, quod imbecille, atque aevi brevis, sorte potius quam virtute regatur. Nam contra reputando, neque majus aliud neque praestabilius invenias, magisque naturae industriam hominum quam vim aut tempus deesse."
It is the belief of the Class of 1885 that the colleges of the country have permitted themselves to be led
22
aside from their true function, that some reaction is inevitable, and that no college can better lead such a movement than Amherst. "It is curious,'' Mr. Charles Francis Adams said, "to think how much the standard of classic requirements might be raised were not the better scholars weighted down by the presence of the worse." It is inspiring to think what might be the effects upon college standards and the life of the coun- try if even in but one institution, instead of this drag of poor scholarship, the better scholars were assisted by a living interest of their fellow-workers.
Here is the work which Amherst can do better, we think, than almost any other college. We can take advantage of our position as a small college and place our emphasis upon the individual training and high quality of scholarship which should be characteristic of the small college. When Amherst takes this place, it seizes leadership, but no such distinction comes with half-way measures.
The College cannot devote its whole strength and all its energies to the elevation of standards and improve- ment in the quality of its work, while at the same time it endeavors to receive increasing numbers. At this point choice is inevitable, and it is in the neglect to meet this demand of existing and imperative condi- tions by a deliberate decision that most of the small colleges have made their mistake. This is an error which Amherst can avoid. We are seekers for schol- arship, not for numbers, and our position can be made clear and publicly distinctive only by limitation upon the number of our students.
Such a limitation being established, it is evident that the applicants for admission to the College must undergo some selective process— preferably, the Com-
23
mittee urge, by competitive examination. The honor of success in such a competition, the consciousness of having achieved individual recognition in the field of scholarship, the esprit de corps which must result, would create at Amherst a condition such as now exists in no American college, bringing together such a body of students and teachers intent upon serious work and the best scholarship as should, in time, make a deep impression upon the life and thought of the country. It is possible in this way to make Am- herst a place where, by four years of valuable work, students may receive a real preparation for the life of harder work which awaits them, and when this is done Amherst will have a conspicuous and honorable place, preeminent in its way among all American col- leges.
By doing these things, perhaps not all at once, but nevertheless as soon as may be, Amherst will become known all over the country. A great influence will be exerted to restore the dignity of the teaching profes- sion. More seriousness will be forced into college life. It will become an honor to prepare for Amherst ; am- bitious students will desire the prestige which comes from entering, and an Amherst diploma will have a distinctive value.
The effect upon the income of the College the Com- mittee has been unable to study thoroughly. Over one quarter of the students who attended Amherst last year were candidates for the scientific degree. The abolition of this degree would, therefore, make a very considerable difference in the numbers attending the College. The reduction would in all probability be somewhat less than the figures alone would indicate, for some men preparing for the scientific degree could
24
without great difficulty, and if necessary undoubtedly would, qualify for the degree of Bachelor of Arts.
In any event, nevertheless, the abolition of the B.S. degree seems to be required. Men who desire a thor- ough scientific course must in fairness be sent else- where, and from this would come our greatest loss in attendance.
From the numbers remaining there would at first be some slight reduction resulting from competitive admission, but it seems that this would very soon right itself. There is good reason to believe that as schools and many other institutions have found the sure cause of growth in the establishment of a waiting list, so Amherst might find that with a limitation upon at- tendance, and admission by competition, the number as well as quality of applicants would improve. It would be reasonable to hope that in less than five years the College would again have an attendance equal to the present, or as near thereto as the limit which may be established would permit. Such deficiency of income as might exist in the meantime, amounting perhaps to fifteen or twenty thousand dollars a year, could, the Committee believe, be covered by five-year pledges from alumni who would be glad to see the College take such a stand as has been outlined.
We therefore urge upon the Trustees :
( 1 ) That the instruction given at Amherst College be a modified classical course as the meaning of that term has been described ;
(2) That the degree of Bachelor of Science be abolished ;
(3) That the College adopt the deliberate policy to devote all its means to the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries ;
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(4) That the number of students attending the Col- lege be limited ;
(5) That entrance be permitted only by competitive examination.
E. Parmalee Prentice, ChairmaUj Ellsworth G. Lancaster, William G. Thayer,
Committee of the Class of 1885.
35 Wall Street, New York, November, 19 10.
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A NOTEWORTHY PROJECT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
The Outlook, February i8, 19 ii
A real democracy must see that the chance for an elementary- education is open to every man and woman. This is the first essential. But it is also essential that there should be the amplest opportunity for every kind of higher education. The education of the mass, while the most important problem in democratic education, is in no way or shape by and of itself sufficient. Democracy comes short of what it should be just to the extent that it fails to provide for the exceptional indi- vidual the highest kind of exceptional training; for democracy as a permanent world force must mean not only the raising of the general level but also the raising of the standards of excel- lence to which only exceptional individuals can attain. The table- land must be raised, but the high peaks must not be leveled down; on the contrary, they too must be raised. Highly im- portant though it is that the masons and bricklayers should be excellent, it is nevertheless a grave mistake to suppose that any excellence in the bricklayers will enable us to dispense with architects.
In this country we have met better than in other countries the demand for general education, and there is now on foot a widespread and most useful and important agitation to better this type of general education by making it more practical, by making it more a training of the average boy and girl for what that average boy or girl must do in after life. The higher tech- nical schools carry out the same purpose on a more advanced scale. Law schools, medical schools, agricultural institutes, engineering schools, and all similar schools for technical train- ing are being improved and are increasing in numbers. The average State university takes its students as soon as they leave the high schools and gives them a technical training as a prepa- ration for some professional or commercial career, and it does
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this on so large a scale and so successfully that the small, privately endowed college of the old type cannot in this field compete successfully with its great State-aided rival. The large private universities, especially in the East, which have no State support, have been forced to meet this rivalry, and have been enabled to do so only by the extraordinary gifts which they have received from friends and alumni. Through these endowments new technical schools and professional and post-graduate courses have been established in profusion, and it is this fact that enables Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and certain other similar private institutions to perform the work which the State universities also perform, by taking stu- dents from high schools and graduating them equipped to pursue a technical occupation.
It is to meet the state of affairs thus created that Messrs. E. Parmalee Prentice, Ellsworth G. Lancaster, and William G. Thayer, of the Class of 1885 ^^ Amherst, have as a committee prepared a plan which they have submitted to the Trustees of that College. Their report is one of the most noteworthy of recent educational documents. In their opinion, Amherst at present has no place such as that which it filled fifty or even twenty-five years ago, when education was not of so technical a character, and when a college man was more representative of individual training and general culture than at present. As things are now, the high school fits for the university, and the university for the selected calling. Amherst, on the other hand, demands a preparation not within the tendencies of the high school, and gives a course of training which does not specially fit a man for any particular calling. Moreover, Am- herst has not the means which will enable it much longer to compete on their own terms against the State universities and huge privately endowed universities. Either Amherst must be content to occupy an entirely secondary position in the educa- tional field, or else it ought to occupy a no less entirely separate and distinctive portion of that field.
The three men who have signed the address then proceed to give the reasons why they believe that here is a distinctive field of the highest value which Amherst both can and ought to occupy. With equal boldness and wisdom, they advocate Amherst's frankly taking the position that it does not intend
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to have anything to do with that tjrpe of education — necessarily, much the most popular type— the appraisal of which is purely commercial, the value of the training being measured by the income it returns. They insist that, in addition to this more ordinary and usually more necessary form of training, there is another which should be undergone simply for the sake of learning and for the benefit of the State; the kind of training which will help in giving to the State the incalculable benefits of a literature of the first rank and statesmanship of the first rank. For this purpose they believe that Amherst, so far from diminishing the attention given to classical training, should greatly increase it, modifying it from time to time, of course, to meet the demands of modern scholarship; and that for this purpose Amherst's aim should be to get the best teachers of the country in its own chosen field of work, and the ablest and most serious of the young men who desire to profit by such a course of teaching. They propose that Amherst shall frankly abandon the purely scientific part of collegiate work and stand for a liberal classical education, an education along the old lines, but better than could be obtained by the old methods ; an education which will make Amherst of high value to the public by train- ing statesmen and leaders of public thought in civics, in the history of government, in the development and significance of institutions, in the meaning of civilization. This education is, in Amherst, to be the substitute for the effort personally to equip a man for a trade.
The Committee is careful to explain that it does not advocate the elimination of the sciences nor advocate the unchanged classical course of fifty years ago. A knowledge of science is part of a liberal education ; but the science is to be taught so as to turn out, not an engineer, a chemist, an electrician, a biolo- gist, but a man of broad general scientific as well as of broad general classical training. The Committee also expressly dis- claims any kind of criticism upon what is done by the average big university of to-day, and especially by the average State university. On the contrary, it explicitly recognizes the fact that technical education and trade education are essential to the work of the world, and that the vast development of the schools and universities in technical lines has been a public and urgent necessity. But it insists, and quite rightly, that this does
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not meet all the demands of the world, and that different insti- tutions can with profit to the public turn their attention in different directions. Its theory is that Amherst should stand for a cultural education, for one which will give breadth of view, which will fit a man not so much to be a leader in any one special calling as to be a leader of public thought; that the graduate of Amherst shall not be specially fitted for one voca- tion, but that his training shall have been such as to stand out- side the straight line to pecuniary reward. There is room in our country for institutions of every kind, and the need for highly efficient technical schools does not imply that there is any less need than formerly for the highest and best type of classical education.
Accordingly the Committee states that, in its judgment, Am- herst should now completely cease the effort to compete in tech- nical education with other institutions, and devote itself to the classical field of education — to what were once called the "humanities" — and that in this field it should endeavor to take a position as a leader. To accomplish this end, it advocates, first, that the Faculty should be composed of the best teachers in the country for their chosen courses, and, second, that the body of students and the purpose and life of the College should be directed toward excellence in scholarship. The most funda- mentally important part of the proposition is the proposal to stop all effort to increase the material equipment of the College, and, instead, to endeavor to increase the infinitely more impor- tant intellectual equipment by very largely raising the salaries of the instructors. Not only is the Committee absolutely right in this proposition as regards Amherst, but what it says applies in only a less degree just as much to other institutions of learning. Altogether too much money has been put into bricks and mor- tar in our colleges compared to the amount that has been put into the salaries of the men who are to give the instruction. A really good university should have among its professors not only good teachers, but men of creative and productive scholar- ship. There are many such now. But there ought to be many more. It is not necessary that teaching be made a conspicu- ously lucrative profession, but it is necessary that the compen- sation be not conspicuously low. A young man of ability with high ideals ought not to make money-making his first pre-
30
occupation. But he certainly and emphatically ought to insist upon an adequate salary, one sufficient to support his family and to enable him to associate with his equals on equal terms. A successful professor in a prominent college should occupy a position that will compare well in dignity with the position achieved by success in other occupations. The very low salaries of our college instructors and professors represent a funda- mental national evil. There should be a fundamental change, and, as the Committee says, in order to bring about this fun- damental change what is needed is not a slight increase but a radically new standard of compensation. If Amherst would take the lead and in striking fashion inaugurate this new stand- ard, that mere fact would at once give the College a command- ing position of a unique kind.
In conclusion, the Committee urges, to carry out its policy:
( 1 ) That the instruction given at Amherst College be a modified classical course,
(2) That the degree of Bachelor of Science be abol- ished.
(3) That the College adopt the deliberate policy of de- voting all its means to the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries.
(4) That the number of students attending the College be limited.
(5) That entrance be permitted only by competitive examination.
I am by no means sure that this fifth provision is wise ; and, in my judgment, the "classical course" should include also a wide sweep of general history and literature. But the proposi- tions, taken together, represent a proposal which, though radi- cal and startling in its novelty and in its utter divergence from the ordinary type of educational proposal, nevertheless if put into effect, will mean far-reaching benefit to our national life. If Amherst College is willing and able substantially to adopt the suggestion of the Committee, a great good will have been accomplished; and in any event the Committee is to be con- gratulated for having so clearly set forth the principle which it is more essential for America than for any other nation effectually to realize. Theodore Roosevelt.
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE SMALL COLLEGE
New York Evening Post, editorial article, February 25, 1911, copied in The Nation, March 2, 191 1
We have increased our machinery of education enormously and have thrown the old engines into the junk heap, yet somehow we cannot get away from an uneasy feeling that the product has in some respects deteriorated. The continual complaint that athletics and social functions have usurped the place of study in our colleges is only one expression of a pretty wide dissatisfaction. President Lowell made this the key-note of his inaugural address, and declared that the one thing necessary was to reawaken the imagination of the students and to arouse their ambition by some sharpening of competition for honors in scholarship. Many causes have contributed to this con- dition of benumbed intellects; perhaps the most obvious is the simple fact that students no longer have any real community of intellectual interests, owing to the variety of courses fol- lowed. What common ground of conversation can there be, or what basis of stirring emulation, between the student, for example, who is spending his afternoons in a laboratory in- vestigating the pressures of steam, and one who is giving laborious days to a comprehension of the human problems that underlie the Greek tragedy, or between the student who is ab- sorbed in the delightful research into Gothic roots and one who is concerned with the literature of an age that used the word Gothic as a synonym for barbarous?
Here is a difficulty which, for the large university at least, may seem at present insurmountable. The university, in the very nature of the case, may feel bound to foster all the diverse activities of the world for which it is at once a place of training and of progressive experiment. And in truth the lack of community among the students of our universities is only a reflection of what has come to be the state of society at large.
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Compare any circle of men who meet together to-day for the discussion of intellectual matters with a similar reunion of one or two centuries ago. It used to be a common rule of such gatherings that any subject might be the center of con- versation except politics. On the contrary, any such circle to-day, which does not exclude men of affairs, is almost sure to drift away from every theme except politics and reform— only there can all minds touch. There is no greater error than to suppose that bodies of men are attracted together by diver- sity of interests.
The way of escape from this deadening dispersion is thus almost blocked, as matters now stand, for the large university. But with the small college, technically so called, the case is different. The very limitations of its means and Faculty pre- vent it from competing with the large university as a general workshop, so to speak, of all the intellectual activities of the age. If it develops its laboratories, the humanities are bound to suffer; and if its money and choice of men are for the humanities, the laboratories are sure to go unfed. And even within a particular study it cannot look for completeness from a number of balancing specialties, but must cultivate the sub- ject itself in a general way.
This limitation has been recognized by some of the more firmly established Eastern institutions. A few years ago there was a good deal of talk, for example, about definitely limiting the number of students at Williams, but we note that this year's freshman class is considerably above 200. An "Address to the Trustees of Amherst College by the Class of 1885," recently published, goes into the question more thoroughly and with more decisive purpose. The Committee makes five proposals :
(i) That the instruction given at Amherst College be a modified classical course as the meaning of that term has been described;
(2) That the degree of Bachelor of Science be abol- ished ;
(3) That the College adopt the deliberate policy to devote all its means to the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries ;
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(4) That the number of students attending the college be limited;
(5) That entrance be permitted only by competitive examination.
The real difficulty is likely to lie in the matter of the first two articles, which define the quality of the excellence to be aimed at. To abolish the degree of Bachelor of Science, and make the classics the heart of the curriculum— one can hear the protests that are likely to be hurled at the authorities. Yet it is not easy to see how the small college, leaving out of account the technical institutions which give science degrees and have their own exclusions, is to derive any advantage from the limi- tations save in just this direction. In salary it can scarcely hope to go beyond the richer universities, if it can equal them. It can, however, attain that unity of scholarly interests— with, of course, proper variety— the absence of which is having so benumbing an effect on the larger and more heterogeneous institutions. At a dinner where were present several members of the Faculty of a certain small college which apes notoriously the university system, the talk turned into kindly remembrance of the absent brothers; and said the learned investigator in biology to his neighbor of the physical laboratory: "Do you know that Smith came to me to-day and wanted to know about something in biology; what has a philosopher to do with biology?" It is just that spirit of dispersion that might be eliminated by giving to education, where it can be given, a sure order and hierarchy. And, whatever may be said here and there against the "dead languages," however they have been abandoned for easier and seemingly more direct paths to success, there are no studies other than Latin and Greek that can be practically proposed as the center of such a system. Indeed, the Committee whose report we are considering makes a strong appeal for their unique value in individual culture and in the national life. And there are other indications that such views in regard to the classics are becoming commoner to-day among men of wide knowledge of life and among our profes- sional educators. It is not unusual to hear from practical men such opinions as Mr. Bryce put so well in his letter to the Sym- posium on the Classics held at Ann Arbor in 1909 :
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"It is a mistake to live so entirely in the present as we are apt to do in these days, for the power of broad thinking suffers.
*'A mastery of the literature and history of the ancient world makes every one fitter to excel than he would have been without it, for it widens the horizon, it sets standards unlike our own, it sharpens the edge of critical discrimina- tion, it suggests new lines of constructive thought."
In the same spirit Mr. James Loeb, formerly of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., could say: "That a classical course is a valuable training for business life has always semed to me a self-evident proposition."
Latin and Greek are still the humanities, and the first small college that shall be brave enough to bring back to its halls the true humanistic spirit, may be an influence in education the ends of which no one can foresee.
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AN INTENSIVE COLLEGE
The New York Times, editorial article, May 7, 191 1, reprinted in Springfield Republican, May 10, 19 11
A new form of college is described in a recent number of the Independent by Prof. Harry A. Gushing, formerly of the Columbia Law School. It is based on an address issued by the Class of 1885 in Amherst College through a committee consisting of E. P. Prentice, Esq., of this city ; President Lan- caster of Olivet College; and Dr. Thayer, Head Master of St. Mark's School, all names entitled to respect.
We shall not now discuss the general nature of the college course recommended, save to remark that it seeks thorough culture rather than preparation for any special vocation. What interests us particularly is the means proposed to make the College potent in a high kind of utility for those who are ad- mitted to it. For this purpose it is proposed that the number of students be strictly limited; that only the most promising among applicants be selected; that the high standard set at entrance be rigidly maintained, and that the resources of the College be devoted, not to buildings and grounds and "ex- pansion" generally, but to securing enough pay to professors to get the very best in their several lines. In other words, the College is to be organized to give the best culture by the best teachers to young men best adapted to take it and most eager and efficient in pursuit of it.
This, we believe, is in the right line. It is by no means the model for all colleges, and it is not intended to fill the place of the universities which deserve the name. Much less is it intended to replace professional or technical schools, or the increasing number of institutions that aim to fit young men for callings other than professional. But it would benefit a certain class, numerous when we take our whole population into account, who seek through hard work to attain a really thorough training in the art of thinking and of study, which
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is, essentially, education. For this class at present the pro- vision in the United States is pitifully inadequate. It is in a way less than it was fifty years ago, when college students generally were confined to those who were seeking to enter one of the three professions then recognized. For these general culture in a limited course was consid- ered sufficient, and usually proved so. But the saving condition in the relatively modest institutions before the Civil War was that nearly all the students "went through college" at substantial cost and sacrifice to themselves and their families, and were disposed to work hard to make the most of what was a real privilege.
The Amherst Committee seek to secure this same spirit and to make the most of it. They would sift out the lazy, dull, the incapable, and give to those really able and determined to take it careful and thorough training in such general culture as can be had in four years. They would establish a working college for working students, and for such an institution there is a definite and strong demand.
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THE REGENERATION OF THE SMALL COLLEGE
New York Independent, April 13, 191 1
The old, unsettled problem of the status and service of the small college has never received such keen discussion as has followed the recent address of the Class of '85 to the Trustees of Amherst College. The solution of that problem thus far either has been made unnecessary or has been avoided. In some instances the small college has ceased to be small; in other instances it has ceased to be a college; in still other instances it has temporized in the hope of out- growing one characteristic or the other under the stimulus of purely business management or of academic competition. This indecision has been met squarely by the proposals of this address; and if these can be adapted to past traditions and existing conditions, either at Amherst or elsewhere, there may be one small college unique in its definite and ambitious purpose, which will stand for a higher ideal in collegiate schol- arship, which will not represent the prevailing spirit of inert opportunism and philosophic compromise, and in which the Faculty will do more than "organize the interruptions" of college life.
The address, in which the Class has "stepped boldly into a relation to their College which opens up an entirely new field for alumni activity," has already aroused abundant comment and has been regarded as a summons to some small college to realize and seize upon what many believe to be a real oppor- tunity for public service. Unconsciously it applies the test of the unsatisfied world to the satisfied college.
The underlying idea is that the small college should provide a broad cultural training adapted to meet the present call for carefully trained graduates, should lead in a rational reaction against the prevailing trend to vocationalism and "business" education, and should illustrate the utility of a reversion to the old humanities, using them, with their modern develop-
38
ments, as the basis for four years of discipline. The college course would become a real business for all and not a diversion for many. Having once adopted an ideal and a standard of training, those would be maintained, and to their maintenance all else would be subordinated. As no responsible newspaper, even though a purely commercial enterprise, should allow its editorial page to be influenced by its business department, so no college should permit its standards to be lowered or its methods to be relaxed in order to preserve the numerical strength of its student body.
To these ends, as attainable in this instance, only five specific suggestions are made: the strengthening of a modified classi- cal course; the abolition of the B. S. degree; the indefinite increase of the salaries of professors; the limitation of the number of students; and the admission of students only through a competitive examination or some other really selec- tive process.
The proposal of anything bordering on classicism is certain in these days to meet much hostile criticism ; and the use of the term "classical" will in some quarters be reason for prejudice against any plan. No word seems more available as a descrip- tion of the course in the small New England college of fifty years ago. It was classical, in that Greek and Latin were predominant; but it was much more. Then the small college was stimulated by a spirit of puritanic idealism and devotion ; singleness of purpose was strengthened by the possession of an unusual opportunity; vigor and thoroughness in all work were maintained by the realization that college then meant privilege; and through all ran the conviction that the college man owed some especial duty to the public. That was the controlling spirit of the classical college; and a return to that is to be desired quite as much as a return to Latin and Greek. Indeed, the proposal of a modified classical course takes its start from the proposition that a college should train for public usefulness men who will have breadth and thoroughness, the power of application as well as of appreciation, and the per- sistence which usually is developed only in the work of the world. If the spirit of the small college could be the spirit of the old classical days modified by the better portion only of the modern college spirit, there would be little demand for
39
any change of curriculum. For such a revival of the old spirit and old ideals no more favorable place and no more congenial atmosphere can be found than in the small college of New- England.
So far as the curriculum is concerned, these most recent proposals are not radical. While the cultural and even in- spirational value of the classics is insisted upon, recognition is also given to the importance of the modern languages. The sciences, too, are specifically valued as important factors in a well-rounded course. In fact, so far as subject matter goes, the modified classical course is substantially the present course in many colleges, but for the fact that in recent years some colleges have appeared to treat the classics as dying languages, of none but sentimental value. Against that tendency to decry the utility of the classics now appears this vigorous revolt. If there is to be anything of idealism in college life, it can only be by properly subordinating those tendencies which aim at developing chiefly an earning power. The attempt is to bring about a reversion to old ideals, and some college, equipped with a Faculty suitable for such work, may take the leadership in reforming American college life and in freeing college education from the criticism of the business man who sees in it neither sound business training nor broad scholarship and only disqualification for success in business.
The second proposal, the abolition of the B. S. degree by a college of the modified classical type, calls for no comment or argument. If the small college does not, as few do, train for a scientific calling, the courses underlying the degree can be little more than cultural courses, and the degree will be a mis- nomer. If such a degree really differs from the B. A. degree only by ignorance of Greek (and sometimes Latin also) and, possibly, by slightly greater knowledge of the sciences, then it really means nothing distinctive. This would still more clearly appear to be the case wherever a candidate for the B. A. degree is permitted to take even more courses in science than are re- quired of the candidate for the B. S. degree. The proposition is unanswerable that a degree should not in itself be a deceptive figure of speech.
The third proposal, that the college should declare for a policy of indefinite increase in the salaries of professors, will
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commend itself to many. This has been a prevailing and futile dogma since colleges began. The first professors looked upon their calling as akin to that of missionaries, and this error has burdened all their successors. The early types were not urged to go into teaching; they felt called to the work; and, exercising a choice of a well-filled calling, they did not com- plain of its scant recompense for devoted service. No amount of comment has been able to alter this situation. The press to-day, and for years, has been full of generalities on the subject; but seldom are figures offered. When it appears that in a well-endowed college the average man of the entire faculty pays out yearly for the necessaries of living a few hundred dollars more than his salary, certainly in that college the pro- fessors have to "magnify their calling" at their own expense and sacrifice. To demonstrate this injustice a combined bal- ance-sheet of the Faculty is conclusive. To provide an adequate remedy, and to establish quality as the final test of usefulness, a college must be content to have the bulk of its funds so obscurely invested as to show a return only in the classroom. This requires the rare power to resist the temptation to build and expand. The Committee who prepared the address in question would seem to go further, and have their College decline all gifts of buildings which might be unaccompanied by provision to meet the increased maintenance charges or which might provide facilities for more than a fixed maximum of students. To adopt this policy involves an excess of modesty in finance to which few college presidents will be able to yield. They might cease to be financial solicitors and be able to take this ground if once their productive endowments were ade- quate, their working equipment sufficient, and the size of their college so limited as to quiet the ambition for mere numbers. Such a degree of content with outward conditions will never exist as long as there is the stimulus to outgrow a proper and normal plant. To secure such content there must be adopted, as is now proposed, a policy of intensive college development. The two remaining propositions, the limitation in number of the student body and admission by a competitive process, are interdependent. Granted that the maximum of an entering class is arbitrarily fixed, those applying (unless mere priority of date of application is to control) must necessarily be sifted,
4r
and if the limitation amounts to anything, the best among the applicants, up to the number needed, will be chosen. Whether this result is secured by competitive examination, or by the choice of those whose certificates show the most creditable preparation, or of those whose preparatory record otherwise shows the greatest capabilities, the fact is that by some selec- tive process the best only among the applicants will be received. Admission will then mean something real, and the limitation will be fully justified if the work in the college itself can be made of such a superior type that membership in such a college will mean excellence, and its degree will be truly distinctive. If any board of trustees will exercise the discrimination and courage properly to apply such tests to the work in their charge, and to establish such standards and keep to them, they will win the approval of many doubting parents and will develop an American college unlike any we have had in the thorough- ness of its work, the influence of its Faculty, and the character of its graduates. The problem seems not to be whether any college will be able and willing patiently to attempt this, but what college it will be.
Harry A. Gushing. New York City.
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A NEW ALUMNI MOVEMENT
Vale Alumni Weekly, January 13, 1911
The influence of the alumni of the Eastern universities on the work of their institutions has, within the last ten years or more, become a fact of striking interest and significance. We need not here rehearse the application of this generalization to Yale. Through the Alumni Advisory Board, the Alumni Fund, the Class Secretaries' Bureau, the various Alumni Asso- ciations, the Associated Western Yale Clubs, and the Alumni Weekly, Yale graduates have of late been coming to take a more and more interested and effective part — as far as their sphere of action permits them— in Yale affairs. Amherst graduates of the Class of 1885 have recently stepped boldly into a relation to their College which opens up an entirely new field for alumni activity. A memorial from that Class to the Amherst Trustees last November is a new thing in Eastern university life. It will be highly interesting to note the out- come. The plan proposed is a notable one. It calls for a con- fining of the Amherst curriculum to a broad classical education ; for the elimination of professional scientific branches; for a higher standard of undergraduate scholarship ; for competitive examinations for entrance; for a restriction of the number of students to a personal working proportion to the teachers ; and for a very considerable increase in the salaries of the Faculty. With the exception of the last-named clause, this proposal of the Amherst '85 graduates reads like a reconstruction of the old-fashioned Eastern college education. It has in it a great deal of matter for solid consideration. It is a far cry from the efforts seen now and then on the part of some Eastern institu- tions to strike out into the field of competition for numbers. It is far removed from the readjustments of entrance require- ments which now and then are adopted to attract the students who now go to other places. It is a distinct movement away from the kind of rivalry for popularity that one sees now and
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then in some losing institution, and which, unfortunately, makes of intercollegiate athletics an advertising medium. Just how much will come of the Amherst memorial remains to be seen, but it may be said at this stage that in no recent mani- festation of alumni interest in a college's development has there been so vital a proposition made, nor so fundamental a policy offered. A brief review of some of the points brought out by the Amherst '85 graduates is given elsewhere in this issue.
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THE AMHERST PROPOSALS
Brown Aluntni Monthly, January, 191 1
Amherst's twenty-five-year Class has stirred the educational world by suggesting certain new policies for its College, one being that the curriculum be limited to a "modified classical course." Another proposal is the following: "That entrance be permitted only by competitive examination," the avowed purpose being to limit the number of students. Another in- teresting suggestion is : "That the College adopt the deliberate policy to devote all its means to the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries." What action, if any, the authorities of Amherst will take on these proposals can only be a matter of conjecture, but the suggestions are obviously applicable, if at all, to more than one institution.
The expression, "a modified classical course," is open to various interpretations; but if it means an academic rather than a technical or trade course, there can hardly be any ob- jection to it so far as our older collegiate foundations are concerned. It may be of immense importance that our country should have skilful bricklayers or watchmakers, and an institu- tion might do a noble service by providing for their education, but it is still more important to the country to have men who are trained in thought and knowledge. It is to this latter service that our colleges were devoted by their founders, and it would seem to be their business to promote this end, rather than any other, however good ; and this end and aim we under- stand to be the one championed by the Amherst Class of 1885.
Competitive entrance examinations are efficient means of reducing the number of students in a college if that result is thought desirable, and cases may arise in which restriction becomes the most natural course to pursue. It is clear that any educational plant can suffice for only a certain number of students. If the attendance has reached this limit, there is nothing to do but to enlarge the college in all directions or to
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keep the numbers down. Eleven years ago Brown had greatly exceeded its accommodations — how much can best be judged by the enormous extension of its facilities that have been made since. It is now in substantial equilibrium as regards numbers and accommodations, and its numbers have remained the same during that period. But suppose we had an immediate pros- pect of another trebling or doubling, would our corporation favor undertaking the enormous outlay involved, or would it set the limit at one thousand and seek some device to keep our numbers within it? The method suggested for Amherst is the readiest one, but a juster and wiser one, in our opinion, is that employed at Park College, of insisting constantly upon a high standard of work, not only from term to term, but from week to week. The standard can evidently be so set as to afford any desired degree of exclusion. It is of course possible that the same practice may be suggested in the interest of scholarship as well as in that of physical accommodations.
As to the matter of professors' salaries, while the word "indefinite" certainly sets no limit, however high, we need not consider so much the wording as the principle, which seems to be altogether businesslike, that if you expect to have good work, you must be willing to pay for it. Though altruism enters far too much into the teachers' side of the bargain, the ultimate result is that inadequate salaries mean inadequate teaching. This is the most wide-reaching of all the Amherst suggestions, and its principle is one that all governing boards everywhere are too apt to neglect.
An Amherst Class has given serious counsel to its Alma Mater. Are there not Brown Classes that can give the univer- sity the result of their high thinking?
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FAVOR SMALL COLLEGES
The Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, editorial article, December 3, 1910
Most colleges and universities smile a smile of satisfaction as the number of students at their respective institutions increases. They are proud of the large list of undergraduates, and to many the success of an institution is based on the length of the roll-call. During the last decade the number has greatly increased in all the more prominent institutions of learning, and the increase has probably been much greater in proportion than the growth of population.
But here and there is a sign of a reaction against the tendency towards extremely large colleges. The Class of 1885 of Am- herst, one of the best of the smaller New England colleges, has presented a memorial to the Board of Trustees in favor of restricting the instruction given at the College to a modified classical course, limiting the number of students, and admitting these -by competitive examination. This is a novel suggestion, and yet it is likely to attract serious attention on the part of those who favor the smaller colleges and who still stick to the classical course. If Amherst should adopt the suggestion of the Class of 1885, it would hold a unique place among the colleges, but no doubt there would always be a waiting list of those who desired to attend.
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THE SUGGESTIONS OF '85
The Hartford Courant, editorial article, February 20, 1911
The Trustees of Amherst College are considering — very thoughtfully, we may be sure— a communication from a Com- mittee of the Amherst Class of 1885. The members of the Committee are Mr. E. Parmalee Prentice of the New York bar, President Ellsworth G. Lancaster of Olivet College, and Head-master William G. Thayer of St. Mark's School, South- boro, Mass. They are filial sons of their Alma Mater, troubled in mind about her, solicitous for her future. Their com- munication is of an extraordinary character, interest, and im- portance. They represent to the Trustees that Amherst— for all the increase in the number of her college buildings and the size of her college classes — does not have the standing and distinction among American institutions of learning she had fifty years ago, or twenty-five years ago. They say that it is idle for her to attempt to compete with the endowed universi- ties of the East or the State-supported universities of the West in the work they are doing. She has not their funds or their facilities for it. They can train and equip engineers, chemists, electricians, etc., or business men and money-makers, as Am- herst cannot do. Either she must accept a position of acknow- ledged and permanent inferiority, or she must make for herself a place and mission and distinction of her own.
It is such a new departure — which, after all, is only a return —that these members and spokesmen of the Class of 1885 urge upon the Trustees. They would have Amherst College defi- nitely renounce all thought of rivalry with the universities. They would have her be content with her present size and housing, limit the number of her students, and receive only such as are able to pass with credit a searching competitive examination at the threshold. They would have her abolish the degree of Bachelor of Science, requiring all her under- graduates to qualify themselves for that of Bachelor of Arts.
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They would have her become once more a college of the humanities, giving her sons a sound classical education (with as much of science in it as a college graduate of the twentieth century ought to know), and sending them out into the world to be scholars and teachers, men of letters, professional men, or statesmen, according to their bent. And as one of the first steps in this return the Class of 1885 would have Amherst College cease to plan new buildings and for the present use every dollar that comes her way in increasing the salaries of her professors.
Theodore Roosevelt, we notice, shakes his head a bit dubi- ously in the Outlook over the competitive entrance examination, and suggests (wisely) that the classical education should "in- clude a wide sweep of general history and literature." For the rest, he heartily approves. "The propositions, taken together, represent," he says, "a proposal which— though radical and startling in its novelty and in its utter divergence from the ordi- nary type of educational proposal — nevertheless, if put into effect, will mean far-reaching benefit to our national life. If Amherst College is willing and able substantially to adopt the suggestion of the Committee, a great good will have been accomplished."
In this opinion we heartily concur. If the Trustees accept the suggestions of '85 and act upon them, it won't be long before Amherst's A. B. will take on a meaning and value not always attaching to that degree at the American universities which Eliotized themselves in haste and are now — some of them, at least — repenting at leisure. There are things much better worth while and more to be desired than mere bigness. Amherst could not set a finer example to her sister colleges in New England and the younger colleges in the younger States than by re-entering— contentedly, proudly, and once for all — into her heritage as a college of liberal arts.
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THE AMHERST PLAN
Indianapolis News, January 21, 1911
Progress
Something was said in this column last week of the plan pro- posed by the Amherst Class of 1885 looking to a reconstruction of the college course. The proposition is to give a broadly classical education, to eliminate the professional scientific branches, to raise the standard of undergraduate scholarship, to hold competitive examinations for extrance, to restrict the number of students, and to increase the salaries of the teachers. In its discussion of the subject the Yale Alumni Weekly says:
This proposal reads like a reconstruction of the old- fashioned Eastern college education. It has in it a great deal of matter for solid consideration. It is a far cry from the efforts seen now and then on the part of some Eastern institutions to strike out into the field of com- petition for numbers. It is far removed from the read- justments of entrance requirements which now and then are adopted to attract the students who now go to other places. It is a distinct movement away from the kind of rivalry for popularity that one sees now and then in some losing institution, and which, unfortunately, makes of in- tercollegiate athletics an advertising medium. Just how much will come of the Amherst memorial remains to be seen, but it may be said at this stage that in no recent manifestation of alumni interest in a college's development has there been so vital a proposition made, or so funda- mental a policy offered.
If the policy is "vital" and "fundamental," it does indeed deserve "solid consideration." There are two or three very simple truths which ought to be kept in mind by any one who
so
discusses this question. The first is that not all that seems to be progress is progress. Men and society may move, but it may be in the wrong direction. Or they may be carried by the pressure of forces which it seems at the time impossible to resist. So when we are told that our movement from the older to the newer ideals in education marks a real progress, we have a right to demand of those who make the assertion that they prove it. In truth, the burden is on them. All change is by no means improvement, as we have often seen in religion and politics. The Amherst men— and many agree with them — are profoundly convinced that the changes in education have been very decidedly for the worse. The general dissatisfaction with present conditions still further supports this view. Not for years has there been so much unfavorable comment on education as there is at the present time. The fact that things are different from what they once were by no means proves that they are better.
Lost Ideals
As change from the old does not necessarily indicate progress, so recurrence to the old does not indicate a failure to progress. Whether reversion to type is or is not a bad thing depends wholly on what the type is. The drunkard makes progress when he returns to the old and clean Hfe which he had left behind him. The prodigal in the gospel first "came to himself," and then went back, or returned, or reverted to his father and the old home. Repentance always involves something of this return. Most of us would give much if we could once again know the innocence and artlessness of our earlier years. So in fancy we journey back, and at every step of the journey we feel that we are making in truth a royal progress, though we may be sadly conscious all the while that we shall never again wear the old garland. But we have no doubt that the backward path is the path of progress, and the thing that makes us sad is the realization that we are unable or unwilling to tread it. So it is quite clear that reversion to the old is very often the truest and noblest sort of progress. This is, of course, recog- nized by the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote of those who had caused the people "to stumble in their ways from the ancient
paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up." To the same great man and great teacher we owe the following admonition :
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
The old paths were blazed out by men who had had much ex- perience with life, and some knowledge of human nature. They were not mistaken about everything, are not false guides. A thing is not good because it is old, but then neither is a thing good because it is new. There is, however, a certain presump- tion to be indulged in favor of the old— of what has been tried and tested. That is a truth of which we, in our passion for change and innovation, make far too little. Our educational reformers have given it almost no weight, their theory being that whatever is, is wrong. Progress, therefore, does not necessarily mean going ahead; it may, and often does, mean going back— back to old and forgotten truths and principles.
The Past
The third general principle which it is desired to lay down is that history can have no value to any man who is unwilling to profit by its teaching, or unable to catch inspiration from the great lives that were lived long ago. If we accept the theory that truth is new-born in every generation; that knowledge, which can come only from patient study or painful experience, is a matter of special revelation to a chosen few who call them- selves reformers, then, indeed, the study of history is the most futile of all things. But to such may be commended the words in an address recently delivered :
On and always on, to be sure, the Gleam that Merlin glimpsed must guide the footsteps of the race; but it is well at times to look backward to the brave days of old; to think of the men of the past whose services made this present possible; to listen to the elder voices— how they spoke to their time ; to refresh our spirits at the perennial fountains of their wisdom of thought, and of their pa- triotic fervor of action.
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But why all this unless we expect to be refreshed, stimulated, inspired and instructed? It was St. Paul who said to the Romans: "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope." And again he said to the Corinthians: "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition; upon whom the ends of the world are come." In this latter case, to be sure, the experience of the past was to be avoided. But the point is that whether for instruction as to what we should do or for warning against what we should not do, the teaching of the past is of the highest possible value. Cultured men ought to stand steadfastly against all attempts to create a schism in life, against the efforts to discredit the experiences of the ages. The surest sign that a man is cultured is his ability to "see life steadily and see it whole," and his deep and loyal reverence for a great and sacred past. There are some things to which mere age gives dignity and charm- wealth and learning, for instance. There was life on this planet before we were born, and it affects and influences present life more profoundly than we, in our satisfaction with our own achievements, always realize. Much of our research is de- voted to the rediscovering of lost and forgotten truth. Truth is not always an affair of the future.
THE OLD EDUCATION
Old Voices
So the men of Amherst ask us, at least by implication, to re- consider our hastily delivered judgment on the old scheme of education. Did we condemn it too hastily, and without suffi- cient warrant? Is or is it not true that the present plan was at first considered to be merely an experiment? If so, has the experiment proved successful? Probably not one of these questions can be answered without some qualification, unless it be the first. It does seem as though we had been too sure of ourselves when we overthrew the old curriculum. But it must be recognized that it was the product of two forces, one of which has, to a certain extent, ceased to operate. Largely the
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product of a time when the common people were not expected to be educated, it was based on the theory that learning was for the few. Greek and Latin were necessary to men who were to have anything to do with affairs. So the old system grew up, and it met the needs of the time. As it then existed it does not fit the needs of our time, and the very men who four or five hundred years ago followed the scheme then in vogue, would, were they alive to-day, be the first to admit the need for re- adaptation. For they were progressive men, many of them the heretics of their day. But this is far from being the whole story. For the classical course was not simply a development — it was also a manufactured thing. Great men saw that it was good, and that under it an admirable training could be had. This was true even in this country so late as thirty years ago. The writer of the article in the Yale paper must have had in his mind such men as Porter, Woolsey, Thacher, Packard, Dwight, and the rest, to say nothing of the great roll of alumni nurtured on the old wisdom. These men were not mere stupid reactionaries and Bourbons. On the contrary, they profoundly believed in the virtue of classical and literary study. Such authorities are not to be despised. They all had power and personality, and they themselves, and scores and hundreds of others who might be named, were the products of the old training. The idea that they should now be overruled by a few technical men seeking to magnify themselves is utterly prepos- terous. To them the "old paths" seemed to lead to the highest and most fruitful truth.
Life's Work
But there is other testimony, and of the highest value. It is to be found in the lives of those great men of affairs trained in the English universities. The Balliol type is perfectly well known. Some of the greatest men who have served England were trained at that famous college, and they have been men who "did things" — prime ministers, lawyers, judges, adminis- trators, viceroys, and governors. The present prime minister, Mr. Asquith, is himself a Balliol man. Mr. Balfour, the leader of the Opposition, was educated at Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Lord Rosebery is an Oxford man. Gladstone, Salisbury, Macaulay, and a host of others were all fed on the
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old studies. In our own country such men as President Taft, President Hadley of Yale, former President Wilson of Prince- ton—now, happily, Governor of New Jersey — Governor Bald- win of Connecticut, Chief Justice White, and many others prominent in public affairs, were all educated classically. Judg- ing the training both by those who have advocated it and those who have been bred from it, surely we must say that it has much in its favor. The question is, are we developing such men to-day? Undoubtedly, but we are not developing them by the new methods — and that is the point. Our product is becoming more and more specialized. We are training men away from public service rather than toward it. The man who takes a four-year course in science, giving only such at- tention as he is grudgingly permitted to give to the older studies, comes out of college unfit for anything except the particular task which he has been taught to perform. As Presi- dent Jordan has shown, we are no longer getting scientists, even, with a true love for science as science. So it does seem as though there was something wrong. If that is so, we may well study the past, consider how it was that the classical course got itself established, and dwell somewhat on the fact that great men have championed it and been produced by it — men with a sort of general fitness, with an ability to turn their powers in several directions, men with an adaptation, not per- haps to any special task, but to life itself. As the author of the address already quoted from well says : "The business of life is not business, but life." That is a truth which the reformers persistently ignore.
The True Ideal
There does not thus seem to be any reason why the friends and lovers of liberal studies should assume an apologetic attitude, or allow themselves to be put on the defensive. It is not necessary for them to prove the soundness of their theories, for they have proved themselves, supported as they are by a great body of the highest sort of testimony, and by the ex- perience of the race. It is the innovators who are on the de- fensive— it is they who must prove that their experiment has succeeded. Right reason, too, is on the side of those who, like the Amherst men, would make at least some approach to the
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old curriculum. The mistake of those who would continue things as they are is that they look at the matter solely from the point of view of the supposed good of the college, their idea being to make the college popular and to attract large numbers of students. But the college does not exist for itself, but for those to whom it ministers. The question thus is, not what is good for the institution, but what is good for the young people who attend it. Obviously, what they need most of all is a general training in the fundamentals, discipline, and as much culture as they can get. They must be brought into contact with the great minds of the race, with the treasures of art and literature. Not mere knowledge, but command of one's powers, is the thing to be sought. In this case, as in so many other cases, service of others is service of self. And so what is best for the pupil is, after all, best for the college. "The true university of these days," says Carlyle, "is a collection of books." The man who is not brought into intimate contact with books in his youth, who has not learned to love them and how to use them, suffers a loss which it is almost impossible to make good. So great is the sin of those who would divert the college boy from the library to the laboratory. That college which is true to its mission and function, which gives the best and most inspiring instruction in the essentials, and which sets and maintains a high standard, will never lack for patrons. The appeal of such an institution will, we may be sure, win an enthusiastic re- sponse. It will not only deserve success, but it will achieve it.
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AN EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
Springfield Republican, editorial article, February 21, 191 1
"Few persons familiar with the conditions here and abroad," writes President Lowell of Harvard in his annual report, "will deny that respect for scholarship in American colleges is lamen- tably small." The causes for this development— and it is pre- eminently a development of the past thirty or forty years— are not regarded by educators as at all obscure. When "going to college" became fashionable in the numerous class possessed of wealth, for the most part newly acquired, and hungry for social prestige, the general tone of college life and the character of college ideals began to undergo a transformation. Why should young men who plan to succeed their fathers in the several commercial callings in which the family "pile" has been made seek to distinguish themselves as scholars? It is impossible to have a college crowded with students whose primary pur- pose is to gain social position and a set of swell acquaintances for use in later life, without, at the same time, having its at- mosphere profoundly affected by the alien ideals they breathe into it. Respect for scholarship declines, of course. And the mania for "student activities" of the widest possible range outside of the class-room and the study becomes inevitably what we see to-day — a consuming passion, apparently, of college life, against which college presidents and faculties strug- gle until they are so dead tired that they cannot tell whether they are in the main tent or the side-show.
The newspaper published at the University of Chicago, the Daily Maroon, attracts attention just now by declaring its opposition to intercollegiate athletics as at present conducted. It is against athletics, it says, for the same reasons that it opposes the entire system of student activities which "has made the academic side of college education a mere incident." Ath- letics presents the extreme illustration of the tendency, so much deplored, toward that fatal loss of esteem for scholarship
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among the student body. The richer, more largely attended, and more celebrated institutions have set such a pace in the "major sports" that the expense has become almost killing to those smaller and weaker colleges which endeavor to copy the methods of the leaders. A recent article in a college publica- tion—it was, of course, a dollar-mark appeal to the loyal alumni — was really pathetic in its description of the harrowing efforts of the athletics department to turn out ''winning teams" on nothing a year. Consider the question of coaches. Nowadays, expensive coaches are indispensable, and they must be paid higher salaries than full professors, if "our college is to keep in the procession." It had become a serious question, evidently, whether that institution should retire utterly from the "major sports" because the alumni could not be depended upon to fur- nish thousands of dollars a year to pay itinerant young athletes exorbitant fees for coaching the team a few months. Of course the entire performance is getting to be an imposition upon the friends of those colleges which are frantically trying to conform to a standard of living that is unmistakably beyond their means.
It is remarkable that some college does not perceive in this situation, to which athletics contributes merely its share, an opportunity to distinguish itself by being as different as possi- ble from the run of colleges. It is by no means improbable that the time has come when enthusiastic support would be given, by people who have retained somewhat the old-fash- ioned conception of the higher education, to an institution that would close its doors, if necessary, rather than surrender to that prevalent spirit which makes scholarship the "mere inci- dent" of a college training. If such an institution would reor- ganize "student activities" as determinedly as Stein reorgan- ized Prussia, if it would shoot a streak of sanity through the athletics mania, if it would enforce respect for scholarship or die in the attempt, we should have in America at last a college to be proud of.
Since the special Committee of the Class of '85 made its highly interesting report to the Trustees of Amherst College regarding the wisdom of having that institution specialize in liberal culture and stop trying to compete with the universities and technical schools, there has been a gleam of liope in the
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murky atmosphere. Few things more attractive have been offered in the way of an educational program in recent years to those people who have sons to educate rather than squander money on. Amherst, possibly, could combine the best points of several programs without adopting all the points of any in particular. But by admitting students under com- petitive examination, as suggested, and raising materially teachers' salaries, and bending every energy to the end that the ideal of scholarship should actually dominate the in- stitution to its uttermost corner, a new departure in American collegiate education might be scored that would astonish the land.
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AMHERST'S OPPORTUNITY
Boston Evening Transcript, December 31, 1910
AN INNOVATION IN EDUCATION THE PLAN OF '85
A Striking Memorial from the Members of That Class to the Trustees . . . They Would Pay the Professors More Money, Provide Only a Classical Curriculum, and Restrict the Students . . . The Aim to Bring Teacher and Student Together . . . Their Education Not as Special- ists, but as Citizens . . . The Scheme in Detail
Amherst College faces a proposal of revolutionary change in its purpose, its standards and its methods. Much has been said during the past ten years of the alleged failure of the American college to give to its students that intellectual and moral fibre, that essential discipline and hardening of mental and moral muscle that is fairly to be required of the educated man, and that is a crying need in the conduct of our public life. The foremost men of the college and university world have frankly admitted that at least all other institutions than their own were somehow failing to meet the reasonable expectations of society. And not a few of these leaders have set themselves manfully to work in an effort to change the intellectual and moral current and standards of their own institutions. For the large and complex university, moving with the huge mo- mentum of numbers and custom, any radical change is a task of supreme difficulty. But for the small college already suffi- ciently equipped with land, buildings, and nearly so with funds, the setting up of a new and more adequate standard of general education is mainly a question of seeing the light and then hav- ing the moral courage to break out the path forward.
Just What Amherst Would Do
This is the unique opportunity of Amherst. The circum- stances of the case, and the great benefits to higher education in this country that would result from a hearty adoption of
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the proposed plan are so striking that they deserve the close attention of all who concern themselves with the future of American education and American public life. Briefly, the proposed plan is for Amherst to confine itself to the providing of a broadly classical education, cutting off altogether its pro- fessional scientific courses; that the standard of scholarship required of its students shall be high; that the students shall be selected by competitive examination for admission ; that the number of students shall be so restricted as surely to secure close personal relations between students and teachers; and finally, that the salaries of the teachers shall be indefinitely increased, so that the College may secure and retain the ser- vice, influence, and enthusiasm of the best men— so much has already been inconspicuously noted in the daily press ; but the importance of the new plan is hardly even suggested by this bare outline.
In preface to a more detailed account of the new plan, some- thing should be said of the educational conditions and the alumni and faculty sentiment out of which the new plan arose.
It is a commonplace that within the past fifteen years the center of gravity of our American university and college system has suffered a considerable displacement. The rise of the great State universities, with their nominal tuition fees, their strongly "practical" instruction, and the comparatively great funds de- voted to their support has brought the great, privately en- dowed universities of the East into a new rivalry. For a time, numbers were taken as a nearly sufficient index of progress, but in the East this soon gave way to the providing of pro- fessional instruction of increasingly higher grade. Hence came the vast diversity of our present university conditions, offering every conceivable variety of special training, and seeming thereby to give up the power, if not even the disposition, to provide for the young man seeking a general education the strenuous intellectual discipline, the solid knowledge, and the poise and understanding that pertain to broad and high schol- arship.
The Universities Too "Practical" and Utilitarian
The tendencies in the universities that have given concern to the wisest friends of higher education have resulted from
6i
a great variety of causes. Chief among these has been the utiHtarian, not to say the commercial, eye with which the pubHc has been disposed to measure the value of university training. Rivalry in numbers, due partly to obscure, and partly to very patent, financial motives, has led to the admission into the universities of many boys ill-equipped in either scholastic train- ing or general purpose and disposition to make good use of the opportunities put before them. Athletic reputation has proved an exceedingly corrupting influence, causing many boys to choose this place or that for reasons entirely foreign to serious interest in education ; and distracting them after their entrance with diversions and false standards which the best efforts of faculties have done not much to overcome.
With the "small" colleges the same influences have been operative. The effects have been rather more detrimental than in the universities. In the effort to increase numbers, and thus to increase fees, and the gifts that may spring from the enthu- siasm of alumni, the small colleges have dangled the lure of athletics, and have perforce tempered the wind of scholarship requirements to their increasing flock of shorn lambs. Some of them have added to their normal academic courses semi-pro- fessional lines of training, thus entering into competition with the universities and technical schools in the doing of tasks for which they are quite inadequately equipped. The general result is that the small colleges furnish their students with a training that is, on the whole, distinctly mediocre, attempting tasks utterly beyond their capacity, and neglecting in large part the task that they were best fitted to perform adequately.
This situation holds true of Amherst. The course of study has been improved during the past year by a rather rigid restriction of electives, but the College is burdened with a scientific course in which it cannot offer a training in any way comparable to similar courses in larger or special institutions. Athletics and "college life" are more powerful influences than scholarship. The salaries of teachers are far too low for pres- ent-day requirements, and the Faculty has suffered the loss of first-class men, and failure to secure others, for this reason. In short, Amherst, like other colleges, is not doing conspicu- ously well the work for which its position makes it suited. The
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facts of the situation have been accurately appraised both within the Faculty and among the alumni.
Amherst to Provide a Broader Training
The address to the Trustees, presented by a Committee of the Class of 1885 last November, deals frankly with the needs of higher education in America, and with the necessity of Am- herst's casting its work in new lines if it is to do effective and valuable service under the new conditions of education. The Class of '85 contains many men prominent in educational work, and its committee of three which signed the address has pro- duced a paper of much sagacity and shrewdness. The Com- mittee consisted of E. Parmalee Prentice of New York City, chairman ; Ellsworth G. Lancaster, and Dr. W. G. Thayer, head of St. Mark's School, Southboro.
First and foremost, the address urges that Amherst adopt as its exclusive task the providing of a liberal or classical edu- cation aimed not at fitting the student to secure quick pecuniary reward, but at preparing him for the broader duties of public life. It reviews the changing character of the higher education in this country, and draws the conclusion that Amherst has no high prospect in further competition with institutions whose resources enormously exceed hers. The present scheme of education, it asserts, leaves no place for Amherst. "The high school fits for the university, and the university for the selected calling. Amherst, on the other hand, demands a preparation not within the tendencies of the high school, and gives a course of training which does not fit for, but on the other hand, post- pones, preparation for a calling.'*
"Amherst has stood," continues the address, "for a liberal or classical education— the old-fashioned course— and for many years there was in this respect no difference between Amherst and other institutions of higher education in this country. The value to the public of this training in making statesmen and leaders of public thought is even now unquestioned. It is a training in civics, in the history of government, in the develop- ment and significance of institutions, in the meaning of civili-
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zation— in brief, a training for public leadership, not a per- sonal equipment for a trade." The address quotes President Woodrow Wilson:
"The American college," says Dr. Wilson, "has played a unique part in American life. ... It formed men who brought to their tasks an incomparable morale, a capacity that seemed more than individual, a power touched with large ideals. The liberal training which it sought to impart took no thought of any particular profession or business, but was meant to reflect in its few and simple disciplines the image of life and thought. Men were bred by it to no skill or craft or calling; the discipline to which they were subjected had a more general object. It was meant to pre- pare them for the whole of life rather than some particular part of it. The ideals which lay at its heart were the gen- eral ideals of conduct, of right living and right thinking, which made them aware of a world moralized by prin- ciple, steadied and cleared of many an evil thing by true and catholic reflection and just feeling, a world not of interests but of ideas. Such impressions, such challenges to a man's spirit, such intimations of privilege and duty, are not to be found in the work of professional and tech- nical schools. They cannot be."
The proposition for which Amherst stands, argues the ad- dress, is that preparation for some particular part of life does not make better citizens than, in President Wilson's phrase, preparation for the whole of it. This is the training which Amherst has given, and if now the College were publicly and definitely to stand forward as an exponent of classical learning in such modified course as modern scholarship may approve, the Committee asserts its belief that, with its history, its de- served reputation, and its present position, Amherst can take the place of leadership in this work. "This once done, the College will no longer appeal for support solely to its friends, but would have reason to expect the efficient support of all friends of classical education— that is, of the most conservative, thoughtful, and scholarly persons."
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The Ill-Paid Amherst Faculty
Turning next to the compensation of the Faculty, the address points out clearly the damage to Amherst and to the cause of the higher education that comes from the hardships and limita- tions due to insufficient salaries; and the necessity of largely increased pay.
Fourteen members of the Faculty receive $3000, four receive $2500, one receives $2200 ($600 of this being payment for special work this year), eleven receive $2000, four receive $1600, two receive $1400, one receives $1300, two receive $1200. The dean (one of the fourteen who receive $3000) receives also $1000 additional for his services in administra- tion. Assistants are not included in the list given above, since these men are not permanent members of the Faculty.
The following eloquent statistics regarding the income, living expenses and annual deficit (so far as salary is concerned) of the classes of the Faculty whose salaries are noted above were compiled from reports made in writing by thirty-nine indi- vidual teachers upon uniform blanks. Careful study of the remarks accompanying these reports shows that in many cases the expenditure is kept down to the point indicated only by economy verging upon hardship. Here are the figures, and they will well repay a close examination :
Books, Excess of
Colo.-. T?».,f Cost of education of t„»„i ,^.,»„„ Average
Salary Rent ^^.^^ ^^^^^^^^ lotal ^^o^gf^^ last coltLn
$3000 $596 $2633 $807 $4036 $1036 $620
2500 533 2000 416 2949 449
2200 500 1 100 300 1900 -300
2000 355 1474 476 2305 305
1600 337 1323 638 2298 698
1400 333 1335 405 2073 673
1300 175 500 350 1025 -275
1200 290 1025 362 1677 477
In commenting on the facts disclosed by this table, the address goes into a somewhat detailed and highly significant explanation of the economic and social problem that confronts the professor dependent on such salaries as those noted.
65
The higher salaries, it notes, are in general paid to men of long service, who in the natural course of affairs are compelled to meet higher expenditures. Professors are more and more, as time passes, called upon to perform representative duties for the College ; their children are growing and must be educated, clothed, and fed; standards of living are entailed which are not necessary in the earlier period of the teacher's career. Higher salaries correspond not to a greater temptation to, but a greater need for, the increased expenditure which appears in the table. With this in mind, it is significant that at no period during a teacher's connection with the College is his salary sufficient for his support.
If the $300 surplus noted against the $2200 salary be con- sidered in the light of the fact that $600 of this salary is extra pay for special work during this year, the surplus should enter into the final average as a deficit of $300. With this change, it appears that the average outlay of the Amherst teacher exceeds his salary by $635. Almost without exception, the members of the Amherst Faculty are dependent for a fair degree of comfort in living upon income from sources other than their salaries.
Cost of Living jo % Higher in Last Ten Years
During the last ten years the increase in the cost of living, as shown by averages of the estimates given by members of the Faculty, amounts to almost exactly thirty per cent. But this appears to be under the real truth. An independent investiga- tion of the matter has been based upon figures obtained from the books of Amherst tradesmen. Present-day prices were compared with the prices prevailing in the later nineties on the following items : Groceries, meats, clothing, coal, services (in- cluding those of domestics, mechanics, day laborers, etc.). The results of this investigation seem to show a distinctly greater increase than that indicated by the teachers' reports.
The address presents, as of deep significance, the following comments from the member of the Amherst Faculty who made this independent investigation into prices and the conditions of living under the present salary scale. Fie says :
"When I have indicated the increase in the cost of living based on increase in prices of commodities and services,
66
the story is by no means completely told. The standard of life which a college professor must now maintain entails an increase in expenditure, as compared with fifteen years ago, that statistics of prices do not show. It costs him more to maintain his former standard. But the change of standard enforced upon him by social changes and the sentiments of the college community forces an additional expenditure. Besides this, the progress of knowledge calls for an increase in facilities in the way of books, travel, and general equipment in order that he may keep abreast or ahead in the running and meet the demands of service to his institution. Such changes of standard in living and equipment cannot be reduced to statistics, but they are known to all college men.
"So much on the increased cost of living. Let me indi- cate a method by which to judge of the adequacy of a col- lege professor's income. Some investigation has led me to the conclusion that at Amherst a college professor spends his income approximately as follows, with a family of four: Rent, 17%; fuel, 6%; lighting, 2%; food, 35%; clothing, 20%; sundries, 20%. Assuming that he has a salary of $3000, that would mean $600 for sundries. But what does sundries cover? Such items as the following: Laundry, house-cleaning, kitchen supplies, repairs such as replacement of furniture, rugs, bed-clothing, etc. ; doctors' bills, dentistry, life insurance, subscriptions that he is called upon to make and wants to make, support of ath- letics and Y. M. C. A. benevolence, presents, books, travel, vacations, and the education of his children.
"There are college professors who for years buy no books because they cannot afford it; who for the same reason do not go to the theater, do not subscribe $5 to the musical program, never ride in a parlor car, never have been to the sea-shore or to the mountains, and never could afford to take a sabbatical year to freshen up their life and their work." (During the sabbatical year at Amherst, only half-salary is paid.)
The meaning of these facts could hardly be evaded even by one who wished to evade their unhappy significance.
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In its comment on the necessity for limiting the number of students, the address touches pointedly on the devices and makeshifts that have been adopted in various universities to infuse individuality into the instruction, and a spirit of respect for scholarship into the student public. These devices it con- siders imperfect remedies for overcrowding.
"The college cannot devote its whole strength and all its energies to the elevation of standards and improvement in the quality of its work, while at the same time it en- deavors to receive increasing numbers. At this point choice is inevitable, and it is in the neglect to meet this demand of existing and imperative conditions by a delib- erate decision that most of the small colleges have made their mistake. This is an error which Amherst can avoid. We are seekers for scholarship, not for numbers, and our position can be made clear and publicly distinctive only by limitation upon the number of our students.
"Such a limitation being established, it is evident that the applicants for admission to the College must undergo some selective process— preferably, the Committee urge, by competitive examination. The honor of success in such a competition, the consciousness of having achieved indi- vidual recognition, in the field of scholarship, the esprit de corps which must result, would create at Amherst a con- dition such as now exists in no American college."
The Lack of Leadership
With this wise and inspiring plan before the Amherst public, the situation is in some respects extraordinary. The address has been referred to joint consideration by the instruction com- mittees of the Trustees and the Faculty. Among the Trustees, the Faculty, and the alumni, and even among the students, the plan has been received with a good deal of favor, though the idea of competitive examinations for admission seems to a few rather drastic. Amherst now has about five hundred students. It has abundant equipment, in land and buildings. The new plan would somewhat reduce the number of students, but be- tween the aid that may be relied on from graduates and from a new fund already nearly completed,- there is no financial ob-
68
stacle to the change, even including a marked increase in the salaries of the Faculty. Amherst seems to have within reach the easy accomplishment of an ideal whose pursuit is a heavy tax on President Lowell, and which burdens the head of more than one other university. In the face of all this opportunity there is no leadership — there is a lack of initiative that must impress at least some observers as little less than astonishing. It may well seem the duty of all who know, either by possession or by deprivation, the abiding, solid value of a classical education held to high standards to bestir themselves in support of the new Amherst.
Benjamin Baker.
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THE SMALL COLLEGE
IT HAS A WELL-DEFINED AND IMPORTANT PLACE IN EDUCATION
San Francisco Chronicle, editorial article, April 9, 191 1
Some weeks ago there was a despatch from New York printed in the Chronicle and such other journals as consider educational news worth printing, to the effect that Amherst College, in Massachusetts, proposed to discontinue instruction in science and become an old-fashioned classical college.
The despatch was incorrect, as a letter from an alumnus informs us, the fact being that an influential committee of the alumni has recommended that the College reduce its present amount of instruction in science, but that it shall cease to confer the B.S. degree which, so far as it indicates anything, implies that the holder has a scientific equipment which fits him to undertake some branch of scientific service.
Amherst College is an institution of some antiquity for this country, and, like other New England colleges, was founded at a time when the chief duty of an American college was to prepare earnest and devout young men for the Christian min- istry. If some turned out to be doctors or lawyers, so much the worse for them. In those days America had no leisure class, and collegiate training, except with a view to entering one of the three recognized "learned professions," was not taken into consideration.
Amherst is typical of a considerable number of American colleges with moderate but gradually increasing endowment' and a considerable body of alumni, but which are not so situ- ated as to be able to grow great and accumulate the enormous endowments required for the work of a large modern univer- sity.
All these colleges— at least the older of them— have a history behind them precious to the memory of those who have helped make it, whether as instructors or students. Most of them, like
70
Amherst, are situated in pleasant country villages, with the best of moral environment, of which they are the chief attrac- tion, and around which most of the village activities revolve. The professors, with modest stipends, living the simple life, although usually unknown very far in the outer world, are the most highly respected citizens of the vicinity, and the president is a truly great man. The students, ranking in the order of their classes, have the pick of the company of the village girls. Writing in the memory of years spent at such a college, the life as one remembers it is idyllic. It recalls the traditions of the medieval cloister, free from the distractions and conten- tions of the outer world, with learning, not athletics, the com- munity ideal— the simple thoughts, the simple pleasures, the simple life.
The question is what to do with these colleges. For equip- ping for the very strenuous life they cannot compete with the great universities, and ought not to try. There are great uni- versities enough, and all are enlarging their activities and need strengthening, not more competition. The degrees of the small colleges have not the commercial value of those of universities, nor are the college acquaintanceships so helpful in after life as those of the rich men's sons whom one comes to know, espe- cially if one happens to be a football hero.
What is to be done with the small colleges depends on our conception of what they can do, and the Alumni Committee of Amherst College seems to have solved the problem for all. It is proposed that they become primarily builders of charac- ter based on broad culture, acquired under the inspiration of personal contact with earnest men in favorable environments. This the small colleges can do and the universities cannot do so well, for the reason that, with all their money, they are none of them able to bring men of power, character, culture, and maturity into constant personal contact with the students. The junior instructors are necessarily young men whose small salar- ies compel them to be constantly alert for better positions, and as a class they do not stay long enough in one place to absorb its atmosphere or impress themselves upon the student body. If they remain and advance, their spare time is absorbed in research or in the larger activities of the world about them. And the students themselves are so distracted by the various
71
student body activities, few of them character-building and some demorahzing, that normal development seems almost impossible. Of course, those who attend the universities with earnest purpose progress there as they would anywhere, and have the advantage of a range and equipment wholly beyond the reach of the small college.
Certainly there is a demand — or at least a necessity — for such products of small colleges as these recommendations of the Amherst alumni contemplate. Undertaking nothing which they are not equipped to do thoroughly, the output of such institu- tions should be the choice spirits of their generation — those who both think and feel, but whose intellectual and emotional natures have developed under wholesome discipline and lofty inspiration.
The one danger to which such institutions will be exposed is that as they become known they will begin to receive huge endowments and become fashionable.
72
THE FUTURE OF THE SMALLER COLLEGES
New York Sun, editorial article, February 19, 191 1
An "Address to the Trustees of Amherst College by the Class of 1885" represents a careful investigation into the declining popularity of the liberal classical courses in colleges and uni- versities and the increasing popularity of the courses that lead to degrees in science. The report is signed by E. Parmalee Prentice, a lawyer of New York ; President Ellsworth G. Lan- caster of Olivet College, and William G. Thayer, head master of St. Mark's School at Southboro, Massachusetts, represent- ing the class. It recommends that the College devote "all its means to the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries"; that the number of students received be limited to competitive ex- amination; and of more general interest to the college world is the request that Amherst should abolish its present course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science and devote all its resources to a modified classical course, with a Bachelor of Arts degree for those who qualify. This is radical conser- vatism. Twenty-five years ago there was no occasion for such a recommendation.
Although Amherst and Williams have each increased in size nearly forty per cent, in the last twenty years, they cannot hope to compete in their technical courses with the large universities, with their heavily endowed schools of science. Even the academic departments of these same universities in the East and in the very important Western State institutions have not kept pace with the growth of other departments. An increasing number of students each year pass from the high schools into the universities for a technical training to prepare them for some professional or commercial career. The high school fits for the university, and the university fits for the selected calling. Such a college as Amherst gives a course of training that does not fit for, but postpones, the preparation for a calling. Science is taught as a part of a liberal education only far enough to
7Z
enable the graduates to enter the best professional schools. The committee whose report we are considering believes that the university and the college should each have its distinctive field, and that it is wasteful of the college to expend any energy in an attempt to compete with the university in techni- cal training. They illustrate this with the statement that one- quarter of the students at Amherst to-day are studying for a Bachelor of Science degree. Fewer men each year are taking Greek, not only in the fitting schools but in the colleges. In fact, President Harris of Amherst has said sadly that Greek is now almost a lost cause.
With due emphasis on the fact that the world needs engineers and chemists and technically trained men, this address to the Trustees of Amherst upholds the proposition that for states- men, leaders of public thought, for literature, and indeed for all work that demands culture and breadth of view, nothing can take the place of a liberal classical education. There are probably many who will agree with this report in the assertion that the duty of institutions of higher education is not wholly performed when the youth of this country are passed from high schools to universities to be "vocationalized," but that there is a most important work to be performed by an institu- tion that stands aside from this straight line to pecuniary re- ward as an exponent of classical learning in such modified courses as modern scholarship may approve.
AMHERST A CLASSICAL COLLEGE
New York World, February 12, 1911
Amherst's reported intention of running a real college, of sticking to classical culture, as the plan is understood, and providing students with an academic education mainly, may not suit "progressive" educators. But the plan will be indorsed by many old alumni of other colleges as a departure from the prevailing cult of the practical in college education. Amherst will give a further basis of justification to Webster's well- known eulogy of "the small college" by following the old clas- sical curriculum and leaving the isms and ologies to the larger institutions.
74
THE AMHERST IDEA
Silvae, published by the Classical Club, Normal College, New York City, editorial article, February, 1911
The Class of '85, Amherst College, has presented an "Address to the Trustees" urging the adoption of a new policy, of which the salient points are the following: (i) Limitation of the number of students; (2) Admission by competitive examina- tion; (3) The use of "all its means" for the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries; (4) Abolition of the B.S. degree; (5) The adoption of a single course of study, described as "a modi- fied classical course." This policy is now under discussion by the Faculty and the Trustees ; on their decision rests the most important question, it is safe to say, that now confronts not only Amherst, but also a large number of American colleges which in situation, size, and spirit have, like Amherst, re- mained truer to the historic type than has been possible for our overgrown universities.
Silvae is primarily interested, of course, in the part assigned to the classics in this proposed course of study. The address does not urge (as has been mistakenly reported) that the sciences should be omitted from the curriculum. And no sensi- ble classicist would approve such a scheme. But it does pre- sent cogent reasons why Amherst may well devote itself to a type of education in which well-tested, well-organized, well- taught classical studies are to be neither ignored nor minimized. There are many places where technical subjects can be prof- itably studied, where professions can be anticipated, and "voca- tions" assured. There is, surely, room and need for at least one institution where the old-fashioned humanities can exist on some other terms than the usual contemptuous tolerance.
This address is only one among many signs that American educators are realizing how much too far the reaction against the study of Greek and Latin has gone. Even Mr. Charles
75
Francis Adams, the writer of the once- famous pamphlet on Greek as a "College Fetich," is now reported to maintain that at least one classical language ought to be included in every student's college course. If it were any longer the fashion to quote Latin, it might be remarked, with Ergasilus in *'The Captives" :
'Tum denique homines nostra intellegimus bona Quom quae in potestate habuimus ea amisimus."
Yet even if the classics were to be utterly banished from the curriculum, the Amherst proposal would be eminently worth trying. A group of competent, well-paid teachers, a uniform, well-devised curriculum, a manageable number of adequately prepared students — such a combination should produce unique results, far-reaching in their influence on national culture. It sounds like a new chapter in the "Day-Dreams of a School- master." Is Amherst daring enough to make it a reality?
76
The Classical Weekly, editorial article, February i8, igii
Other matters have crowded out, for a time, the consideration of a most interesting and important document in regard to the future of our small colleges. I refer to an address submitted to the Trustees of Amherst College by the Class of 1885.
With the enormous additions in recent years to the re- sources of our great universities, whether private, as are most of the Eastern institutions, or public, like the Western institu- tions, the question of the future of the small college has become more and more a burning one. Scientific instruction, as at present carried on, requires such an expensive plant that only in the great institutions can it be adequately provided for. Our smaller colleges have neither the equipment nor the in- structors necessary for those who are looking forward to a life-work in what may be called scientific fields. The alumni of Amherst College, frankly recognizing this situation, have made the rather revolutionary suggestion that young men seeking a scientific training should not go to Amherst at all, but should try such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. What, then, is left for the small college? Has it any function at all? This address asserts positively that it has, and proceeds to define it as in general the training of men for the larger life of the community, **a training which should be undergone for the sake of learning and for the benefit of the State." This training is, in brief, the old classical training modified to meet the modern conditions of human interests. With the further suggestions in the report as to the necessity of raising salaries of professors so that they can be adequate teachers, I have nothing to do.
It seems to be high time to distinguish clearly what the advocates of vocational training really have in view. They put forward a very specious plea that a child's training should fit him for what he is going to do in life. They ignore entirely the other side. They have no concern with what a man is
77
going to he in life. The conditions of life have been profoundly modified by scientific discoveries made by men, many of whom had no personal influence at all, but the majority of those who make their living by engineering or the other so-called voca- tional pursuits are not going to modify human conditions in this fashion. The question with them is not so much what they are going to do as what they are going to be, what influence they are going to exert by their own personality upon their neighbors. It is a significant as well as unfortunate fact that the life of our nation has been and is being directed almost entirely by men who have no experience in statesmanship. They do not get this experience, nor even the preliminary breadth of view, from vocational training. They can only get it from a study of the world movements and world influences that have been moulding the life and the thinking of man for centuries upon centuries. That is a modern classical education. Our present view of the classical education does not mean one limited to the old curriculum of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, but the ancient literatures must have an important place in any such training. The proper place for such an education is in the small college and not in the large university ; in the small college men have time to grow instead of hustle, the object in view is primarily life and not money. Amherst could not do better than follow the suggestions of this address, and many other smaller colleges would do well to give them serious attention.
Gonzalez Lodge.
78
A NEW PLAN FOR AMHERST
Harper' s Weekly, editorial article, May 20, 1911
In the June number of Harper's Magazine, Mr. E. Parmalee Prentice, of New York, describes the proposal, now under con- sideration and Hkely, we understand, to be adopted, to change the poHcy of Amherst College, abandon all effort and intention to compete in numbers with other colleges, and take what measures are possible to attract a limited number of able and zealous students, and give them four years of the best procur- able general preparation for work in life. The chief changes suggested are to raise the standard of admission and of study after admission, limit the number of students, and devote the resources of the institution, not to buildings, grounds, and ex- pansion, but "to the indefinite increase of teachers' salaries."
A fair trial of this experiment would be interesting to every friend and student of education in the country. If Amherst can operate a system of education that will attract abler young men, and turn out abler and more thorough scholars than the other colleges, she will confer a great benefit on the country, not only by providing useful men, but by demonstrating im- proved processes of training. The amount of time and money that is spent in the great popular universities of the East in giving lazy boys the mere rudiments of mental training is a sorrow to lamenting educators. It will go on, no doubt, with all its vast provision for the social and athletic side of college life, and immense diversion to them of time and attention, until it is demonstrated somewhere that for really ambitious youths there is something better offered which it will pay them to embrace. Inspiring teachers are nine tenths of the battle of education. How interesting is this idea of paying out money, not for advertisement, scholarships, and the provision and operation of huge plants for the accommodation of boys who want to play, but for "the indefinite increase of salaries" of
79
men fit to inspire and instruct boys who want to work ! Let us hope Amherst will try it. It will take a good while— twenty years, say— to give it a fair test. There must be time to see what sort of a product the renovated Amherst can turn out, and how it compares in human efficiency with the men who emerge from the ruck of the great universities. For, after all, the crowd of a great university is a school in itself, out of which some able men get valuable lessons.
See also the article on The Amherst Idea, in Harper's Maga- zine for June, 191 1, under the title, "A New Opportunity for A Small College."
80
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