Academics

“ Every year our universities reward our most advanced young scholars of philology and history, of literature and economics, of physics and chemistry, of mathematics and biology with the degree of Ph.D., that is of Doctor Philosophiae, thus symbolically expressing that all the special sciences are ultimately only branches of philosophy; but the truth of this symbol has faded away from the consciousness of the academic community. ”

“ By the proposed plan however a student would become a teacher; the teacher develope into a professor; and a professor might employ for a period a portion of his time in research, and thus become qualified for entire devotion to original investigation and discovery.
After a scientific teacher has acquired a thorough knowledge of his subjects, and a high position in his profession, his occupation becomes to him a species of intellectual routine, in which he is continually going through the same courses of lectures and examinations over and over again, and his personal improvement stagnates. ”

“ Therefore, the great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term. ”

“ He generally, therefore, assumes his scientific principles as established, and refers to them as well known. The teacher of the art of medicine merely alludes to the facts which form the sciences of anatomy and chemistry; the teacher of rhetoric assumes that his pupil is acquainted with the science of logic and with that of grammar. Many of the sciences and of the arts which are subservient to the art of Political Economy, may be thus treated. ”

“ But under the working of the system of almost unlimited electives which has prevailed in our higher institutions of learning during the past half-generation or more, the candidate for a future professorship is almost certain to discover that he has neglected to lay the foundations of any particular subject solidly and thoroughly well. He knows no elements, as the elements of every species of science and scholarship must be known, in order to proceed safely and with joy in hard work to its ever higher stages of study, research and discovery. ”

“ In prosecuting our investigations into the science of education, therefore, our business is to study Nature in all the educational processes in which we find her occupied, and of which we shall find there are many;—to observe and collect facts;—to detect principles, and to discover the means employed in carrying them out, and the modes of their working;—to trace effects back to their causes, and then again to follow the effects through their various ramifications, to some ultimate end. ”

“ Again, no college or university is properly equipped that is not furnished with a complete series of the objects and implements of instruction and research. In regard to instruction, the impressions made through the eye are the most definite and indelible, and may serve as nuclei around which by association to group facts and suggestions the most varied. ”

“ Let me first say a few words on the great controversy of the present day with regard to the higher education, the difference which most broadly divides educational reformers and conservatives; the vexed question between the ancient languages and the modern sciences and arts; whether general education should be classical let me use a wider expression, and say literary—or scientific. ”

“ There are moral, metaphysical, physical professors; professors of languages, of history, of mathematics, of experimental science. Lists of questions are published, wonderful for their range and depth, variety and difficulty; treatises are written, which carry upon their very face the evidence of extensive reading or multifarious information; what then is wanting for mental culture to a person of large reading and scientific attainments? what is grasp of mind but acquirement? where shall philosophical repose be found, but in the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellectual possessions? ”

“ But great changes have been made, and are still making, in the degree of previous qualification.
‘Still, it would be premature to say, that there is any one of the American universities where classical knowledge, or even science, is profoundly attained, even at the present day. Some of the professors push their studies, for a life, certainly; and you well know, after all, that little short of a life, and a long one too, will make any man a good general scholar. ”

“ Let our schools and our colleges and universities make men first, and then let them make lawyers and physicians and teachers. Ordinarily, so far as education is concerned—and we are confining our discussion to that now—the only path to true completed manhood is through a thorough course of educational training. Latin and Greek and the higher mathematics, rhetoric and logic and mental and moral philosophy, these are the useful studies in education. ”

“ Social Science, History, Literature, Philology, Mathematics, Physical and Mechanical Science are all represented, the object being to illustrate the special function of the University in the discovery and orderly arrangement of knowledge. ”

“ Education broadens to include all men, and deepens to reach all truths. Scholars are no longer confined to Greek, Latin and mathematics, but they also study science; and science converts the dreams of the poet, the theory of the mathematician and the fiction of the economist into ships, hospitals and instruments that enable one skilled hand to perform the work of a thousand. ”

“ There, too, are the learned and philosophical societies, for the study of Science, Letters, and Art. Whence come the men of superior education who occupy the pulpits, exercise the professions of Law and Medicine, or fill the chairs of the Professors in the Colleges of the Union? ”

“ When courses of study in science were first proposed, our colleges were controlled almost exclusively by men of classical training and bias—men wholly outside of scientific life, unacquainted with scientific work, the scientific method, or the scientific spirit. ”

“ Devote your best energies to these objects, remembering that between the young student, however successful, and the ripe and mature scholar, there is a vast space which can only be passed over by years of patient and laborious toil. Remember also that every profession is both an Art and a Science, and that dreamy theorism and vulgar empiricism are equally to be avoided. ”

“ A considerable amount of reading in the literature will be expected for the systematic and exhaustive collection of evidence in a definite field. Reports of the results of work upon special problems and of reading for the collection of materials will be presented from time to time at meetings of the Seminar." So to produce scholarly workers in the various fields of learning is the function of the University—to train specialists, to make critics in the higher sense, to furnish investigators who will enter fresh fields and give the world the fruits of their researches. ”

“ When the cult of research has thus reduced itself to absurdity the time [108] will come when we shall perhaps turn to the conception of a university as a place where, by the study and discussion of problems of fundamental importance, the most intelligent young men and women are brought into contact with the best and most stimulating minds, where the balance is held true between intellect and emotion, between thought and action. ”

“ A well-planned University course is a study of the wide sweep of generality, I do not mean that it should be abstract in the sense of divorce from concrete fact, but that concrete fact should be studied as illustrating the scope of general ideas. ”

“ The study of real things rather than words about things, and useful things rather than subjects merely preparatory to college, became prominent features of the new courses of study. Among the most commonly found new subjects were algebra, astronomy, botany, chemistry, general history, United States history, English literature, surveying, intellectual philosophy, declamation, and debating. ”

“ History, sociology, government, music, fine arts, literature, logic, psychology, philosophy, religion, and various sciences presented as liberal rather than technical education—mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy—these subjects are often condemned as impractical. ”

“ The preliminary training that is the undergraduate work at the universities consisted of the Seven Liberal Arts—the trivium and quadrivium, which embraced logic, rhetoric, grammar, metaphysics, under which was included not a little of physics, cosmology in which some biology was studied, as well as psychology and mathematics, astronomy, and music. ”

“ In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; ”

“ In which direction does human nature most tend? In which direction do educational institutions, in particular, exert their influence? Does the average student, for example, subordinate his teachers and the ideas he acquires to himself? Or does he become subordinated to these, even submerged by them? This is the most important of all the problems concerning study ”

“ There seems to be as yet no body of opinion formed out of the floating mass, unanimous enough to be authoritative and competent to pronounce upon what branches of study are in themselves most worthy, what are most useful as educational instruments, what proportion of time should be allotted to each, and the many other complicated questions which must be answered before a scheme of education can be produced. ”

“ Every institution of learning should, therefore, as I think, strenuously endeavor to draw every one of its students, whatever his plan of life may be, into the influence of this study, by making it peculiarly attractive. And to this end historical instruction should be — and I trust here it is — put into the hands of men who with a thorough mastery of the subject unite a high degree of perfection in the art of teaching. ”

“ Our work now is to broaden both the conception of research and of teaching, to recognize that whatever imports fresh and valid ideas, fresh and valid aspects—not simply of chemical and physical matters, but of aesthetic, social, and political matters, partakes of the honour and claims of research—and that whatever conveys ideas and aspects vividly and clearly and invigoratingly, not simply by word of mouth but by book or picture or article, is teaching. ”

“ The course in geography or Latin is not a quantitative matter; it is not a static affair; it is an organized body of material which grows and changes with the development of society. To the intelligent teacher a course of study is a subject of constant scrutiny and revision. Every detail must be weighed as to its importance and as to its relations to the whole series of topics and to the needs of pupils. ”

“ This work is also technical, requiring knowledge gained more or less from the sciences of psychology, penology, and sociology, and skill gained from experience in the application of scientific principles. Whether they do their work as employes of the state or as members of the domestic or of the ecclesiastical institutions is not at all a matter of concern, seeing that the quality of knowledge and skill for which they are employed is the same in either case. ”

“ In an article published in an English review in 1859, discussing the worth and claims of different kinds of knowledge, and which is one of the most powerful pleas for scientific education that have yet appeared—an article which was translated into half a dozen European languages, and which has been republished in all shapes and a score of times in this country—the claims of scientific education were placed upon the distinctive ground of its bearing upon the highest human interests. ”

“ On the other hand, since all studies are both subjective and objective in the interests they arouse, it would be possible to awaken all the six classes of interest enumerated by teaching but a fraction of what we now consider needful in a good curriculum. ”

“ Many of you in these days pass into another vocation—Letters, or the Press. Here too, almost everything you learn will pay you professionally. Still, I am careful not to rest the case for general education on professional grounds alone. I might show you that the highest work of all—original enquiry—needs a broad basis of liberal study; or at all events is vastly aided by that. Genius will work on even a narrow basis, but imperfect preparatory study leaves marks of imperfection in the product. ”

“ Reviewing, then, the branches of science in which we wish our youth to obtain some instruction, we must distribute them into so many groups as we can employ Professors, and as equally too as practicable. ”

“ He avoids conclusions; he is counseled by his professors against giving too much of his book to the expression of his views. Analyze the chapters of a doctorate thesis and note the number of pages given to facts and those to conclusions and interpretations. The proportion is astonishing. The student's power to find facts is clearly shown; his power to use facts is not revealed by his thesis. The richer the thesis is in detail, in references, in allusions to dusty tomes and original sources, the more thorough is it frequently considered by the faculty. ”