Lyceum

“ The future masters for the different lyceums and colleges are all educated in a special school known as the École Normale, founded under the First Republic, and where, according to the government order calling it into existence, the students have not only to receive instruction, but to be taught the art of imparting it. ”

“ Heroes and scholars have gone forth from their studies here, into the great field of the world, to seek their fortunes, and to conquer and be conquered. As I surveyed the exterior of the different Colleges, I could here and there see the reflection of the light from the window of some student, who was busy at his studies, or throwing away his time over some trashy novel, too many of which find their way into the trunks or carpet bags of the young men on setting out for College. ”

“ Some of these opponents have gone so far as to assert that the customary college degree, Bachelor of Arts, stands as definitely for Latin and Greek as the degree M.D. stands for the study of medicine. Now, inasmuch as the college is the school in which, according to the best authorities, our young people are expected to gain a higher degree of education than the lower schools, academies, and high-schools can give them, the question. What constitutes the basis of higher education? ”

“ The old New England college: the representative college of olden days, injected a love of books and the wisdom of books in their students: reams of the classic poets and prose writers: encyclopædic furnishings of the mind with the contents of a few good, stimulating books. Those were the hey-days of pure scholarship. They have existed here: but we students, today, are illustrations of an evolution in educational ideals, even if most of us [370] don’t seem to realize it. We represent the changed temper of higher education. ”

“ Stand. To stand out for College, verb. phr. (Westminster) .—To enter for a King’s scholarship. Candidates must be under fifteen years of age, and have been in the school as a town boy for not less than a year preceding.
1867. Collins, The Public Schools, p. 182. Then if he thinks proper he “STANDS OUT FOR COLLEGE”—or, in the old Latin phraseology, becomes one of the minores candidati. He undergoes a very severe examination, called the “Challenge” [q.v.] , the form of which must have been preserved from Queen Elizabeth’s days, and is the last surviving relic of the old scholastic disputations ”

“ In an American university the term college or school has largely replaced the term faculty; in Europe the term faculty is still used. Thus we say College of Liberal Arts, or School of Law, instead of Faculty of Arts, etc.
[18] For example, one of our modern state universities is organized into the following faculties, schools, and colleges:
(1) college of liberal arts; (2) school of medicine; (3) school of law; (4) school of fine arts; (5) school of pure science; (6) college of engineering; (7) college of agriculture; (8) school of history, economics, and social sciences ”

“ But, generally speaking, you may understand that a college is an institution which gives a four years’ course in liberal arts and sciences, for which four years of academic preparation are required: a university adds to this, graduate courses, and one or more professional schools of law, medicine, engineering, divinity, or pedagogy; a technological school is one in which the higher branches of the applied arts and sciences are the chief subjects of study and in which only scientific degrees are conferred. ”

“ There are too many academies calling themselves 'college' or even 'university,' with high grade curriculum and low grade requirements, with long lists of pupils in preparatory classes of one sort or another and very short lists of students in so-called college classes. ”

“ With the library, the laboratories and the academic buildings of the university, with the beauty of its architecture, the charm of the open country, the academic and national traditions of the place, the infant college is surely endowed by the fairies with all ideal gifts. ”

“ But accepting our colleges and universities as they are, at the same time discarding the results of tradition and of half-hearted experiment, what should the high school do? By high school we mean the instruction in the public school for four years of school life from the age of 13 or 14 to that of 17 or 18, resting on the primary and grammar school on the one hand and presumably leading to the college on the other—in most cases the last of the years in which a student lives at home and goes to school. ”

“ The college provides for this by its surroundings—the old buildings, the old elms, the old campus, the class songs, the memorial days, the pleasant memories, the struggles and rivalries in recitation, the sports, the diploma, the honor, the prestige in the world outside, the relative standing of “our” college and the other colleges. All these things create in the student the esprit du corps which makes him glad to say, “I belong to this or that college.” See the working of this spirit in a college boat-race. ”

“ Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics, with a modicum of the physical sciences, constituted the favored curriculum of the old-time academy and college. How much some of us owe to that ancient academy and that small college can never be rightly estimated. ”

“ At the present day the question “What should be the course of study in an educational institution of the rank of a gymnasium?” is being much discussed. This I shall return to later. But the question what the course of study should be seems to me by no means the only important, nor even the most important, one. ”

“ What, then, are the faculties which education is supposed to train? In my attempt to answer this question I will confine myself to the elementary school,—the only school which I can pretend to know well. A glance at the time-table of an ordinary elementary school might suggest to us that there were two chief groups of faculties to be trained—those which perceive and those which express, those which take in and those which give out. When such subjects as History, Geography, or Science are being taught, the child's perceptive faculties are being trained. ”

“ The College seems to be intended chiefly for ladies who have completed their ordinary course of English studies, and it will be divided into two departments, Educational and Industrial. In the latter, classes will be held for various decorative and technical arts, and for wood-carving, etching, and photography, as well as sick-nursing, dressmaking, cookery, physiology, poultry-rearing, and the cultivation of flowers. The curriculum certainly embraces a wonderful amount of subjects, and I have no doubt that the College will supply a real want. ”

“ Those who looked forward to a University degree, or any career in which public examinations must play an important part, were placed on the "Collegiate" side, and trained accordingly in the necessary classics, mathematics and physics, which would fit them for matriculation, or as candidates for certain scholarships. ”

“ This building is indeed a college of learning; within its lofty walls lessons are given and learned, not only in the usual arts and sciences, but, best of all, in the art of teaching, and of becoming competent to guide, instruct, and develop all the best powers of the little children. ”

“ In my first term I spread myself through the common school, the business, the college preparatory, the collegiate, and the theological divisions of the University! It was akin to taking an academic ride in five carriages at once! When the professor dismissed me from [82] the college class in logic I went immediately into the basement, where I joined the grammar class, and from the grammar class I went to the theological department and recited on Church History. ”

“ As a professor in the university, not only am I in constant relations with students in the early semesters, and frequently, through my public lectures, with those who are not studying medicine, but also, for upward of twenty-five years, as examiner for the state and for the Faculty, I have learned more or less accurately the educational standing of some 3,000 young men who had left the first class of the gymnasium from two to four years previously. ”

“ A student might, for the sake of a degree, go from a court school to a university, but, as a rule, if what he wished were a general course, he would be satisfied with the greater prestige that came from being a pupil of one of the distinguished humanists that the court schools were generally able to retain at their head. ”

“ A university is properly a universal school, in which are taught all branches of learning, or the four faculties of theology, medicine, law, and the sciences and arts.—Cyclopædia.
2. At some American colleges, a name given to a university student. The regulation in reference to this class at Union College is as follows:—"Students, not regular members of college, are allowed, as university students, to prosecute any branches for which they are qualified, provided they attend three recitations daily, and conform in all other respects to the laws of College. ”

“ The high school, built in 1806, for many years a familiar object on the west margin of the Links, gave way to the academy, a handsome and commodious structure, to which are drafted senior pupils from the numerous board schools for free education in the higher branches. ”

“ About 1100 there arose studia generalia, or what we should now designate as professional schools, called forth, as Professor Laurie believes, by the growth of learning demanding specialization, by the rise of a lay feeling in connection with the work of the physician, the lawyer, and even the theologian, and by the actual specializing of the three leading studies at different centers of instruction. These schools were open to all the world, free from monastic rule, and self-governing. The name university came later. ”

“ When I speak of the College Tutor, it must not be supposed that one man is equal to all this work in a large college,—Trinity, for instance, which usually numbers four hundred Undergraduates in residence. A large college has usually two Tutors,—Trinity has three,—and the students are equally divided among them,—on their sides, the phrase is,—without distinction of year, or, as we should call it, of class. ”

“ We have seen placed side by side, in the same burgh town, an English school, in which what are deemed the branches suitable for mechanics and their children, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, were energetically taught, and a grammar school in which a university-bred schoolmaster laboured, with really not much energy, especially in those lower departments in which his rival excelled, but who was fitted to prepare his pupils for college, and not devoid of the classical enthusiasm. ”

“ High schools (Realschulen, Realgymnasien, Progymnasien and Gymnasien) . All high school teachers, except those engaged in technical departments, must first absolve the nine years' gymnasial course, which commences at the close of the third school year. Next comes the university course of three or four years. The candidate is now ready for the State examination. The subjects for this State examination ... are divided into four classes: 1. The ancient languages and German; 2. Mathematics and natural sciences; 3. History and geography; 4. Religion and Hebrew. ”

“ Many colleges and collegiate departments of universities provide electives that are accepted by some schools of theology, law, or medicine for their regular first-year work. In rare instances, studies covering two years are made common to the college and the professional schools. ”

“ Now, for the first time, when we have to accompany the Student from the Academy into Life, we must call to mind that the studies and character of the Progressive Scholar are not necessarily completed with his residence at the University ”

“ A new college is founded every week. Today more than half of the high school graduates go on to college.
There are hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers who never completed grammar school--who will see their children graduate from college. ”

“ The college courses include—arts, science, elocution and oratory, business, music, civil engineering, physical education. The graduates of the college course are admitted to the post-graduate courses of Pennsylvania, Yale, Princeton and Harvard on their diplomas. Students pass from any year's work of the college course to the corresponding course of other Institutions. ”

“ By those who have passed through the Universities it will be read with considerable pleasure, affording as it does such happy reminiscences of 'College days,' with their grave, plodding seriousness, or that more boisterous playfulness which is supposed to be the characteristic of students as a class. ”

“ The professorial theory of college life is, that the faculties are being exercised and the resources collected with which the battles of life are subsequently to be fought and its victories won. And there is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in this theory. The acquisitions of the class-room will all be found useful in future, and your only regret will be that they have not been more extensive and thorough. The gymnastic of study is suppling faculties which will be indispensable hereafter. ”

“ Here about the great college and its big laboratories there will be men and women reasoning and studying; and here, where the homes thicken among the ripe gardens, one will hear the laughter of playing children, the singing of children in their schools, and see their little figures going to and fro amidst the trees and flowers. ”