Classical school

“ We shall follow the pre-high-school modern language courses by substantial high school courses in the languages, and so continue the real education of the pupil begun in the grammar school, instead of deferring it as we now do for the classical student until he reaches the college. For, at present, classical education in the secondary school, like the formal education that used to precede it in the elementary school, is, for most pupils, only an alleged preparation for education, not education itself. ”

“ With the present modern differentiation into a classical and modern side, or their equivalents, the ordinary school subjects should be sufficient preparation for any university course if they are not mutually strangled in the pressure of an overcrowded curriculum. ”

“ Anyhow, those who wish to see the study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to feel convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it can be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless they have seen it before.
Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be finished at school. When a young man goes to a University, unless he means to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to enter upon a new career. ”

“ For, although we think that there are many students now coming to us through the classical schools who would run a better chance of becoming useful men if they were trained from the beginning in a different way, yet such is the social prestige of the old classical schools and of the old classical culture that, whatever new relations might be established, the class of students which alone we now have would, I am confident, all continue to come through the old channels. ”

“ The important thing for the schools was that the university movement made the cathedral schoolmasters devote themselves to theology and to grown-up students, to the exclusion of grammar and arts, and left the grammar school entirely for boys and youths to be instructed in classical literature, rhetoric and the elements of logic, preparatory for the university. Moreover, the movement for university colleges perhaps caused a new crop of collegiate churches to spring up, of which grammar schools formed an integral and important part. ”

“ We look, then, for no change in the classical schools. Our only expectation is to affiliate the college with a wholly different class of schools, which will send us a wholly different class of students, with wholly different aims, and trained according to a wholly different method. At the outset we shall look to the best of our New England high-schools for a limited supply of scientific students, and hope by constant pressure to improve the methods of teaching in these schools, as our literary colleagues have within ten years vastly improved the methods in the classical schools. ”

“ For those who were to form the official and directing class of Society—a closely limited, almost entirely male, intellectual aristocracy—education in separate classical schools, with university or professional training superimposed, was provided, and this type of training offered a very thorough preparation for a small and a carefully selected class. ”

“ The domination of the classics is at an end; but any student who prefers the traditional path to culture, or whose parents choose that path for him, will find in several American universities much richer provisions of classical instruction than any university in the country offered sixty years ago. ”

“ The claim put forward by public schools concerning the 'classical education' they provide seems to be more an awkward evasion than anything else; it is used whenever there is any question raised as to the competency of the public schools to impart culture and to educate. Classical education, indeed! ”

“ 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. ”

“ But for those who mean to make science their serious occupation; or who intend to follow the profession of medicine; or who have to enter early upon the business of life; for all these, in my opinion, classical education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see "mere literary education and instruction" shut out from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's College, seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering of Latin and Greek. ”

“ I name freedom of choice between various courses of study. The old way in the more venerable colleges and universities was, to force all students through one single classical course—the same for all. This system the "new education" discards. General courses in literature, science, and arts, are presented, as well as special courses having reference to the great industries; and the student, with the advice of friends and instructors, takes that which best suits the bent of his mind. We believe that the results are already better than those of the old system. ”

“ There was geometry, astronomy, music, grammar, rhetoric, logic and metaphysics, with considerable ethics and political science, so that they resembled in many ways our modern universities as they have been transformed since the re-introduction of scientific studies into them. {203} The university faculties were content and conservative after the fashion of universities ever, and they quite naturally refused to entertain the notion of such a radical change as the introduction of classical studies into the curriculum. ”

“ The essay work for and with the College Tutor is especially valuable and a most important part of the classical training received. The subjects of study range far beyond the limits of classical antiquity. ‘The dominant note of the examination is ... general culture upon a firm classical basis.’ Quite a number of University prizes and scholarships are offered in Classics. ”

“ The French and German, and for that matter the English, too, in most of our colleges, are mere child's play, where they are not broad and ridiculous farces, the butt of students and professors alike. Let some of our colleges inaugurate the reform: lay out a "modern" course for admission and for college on the same general principle as the classical course—few subjects, but long-continued and detailed study in each of them—and insist on as thorough and vigorous work as they do in their Latin and Greek, and then, after a fair trial, compare results. ”

“ But, for ordinary students in college, this is simply futile and impossible, and we have here the perpetual fallacy of the advocates of classical studies. Experience in the universities of all countries and for centuries, and everywhere attested to-day, assures us that this ideal classical accomplishment is not attained, nor anything approaching it. ”

“ The famous "Blue-Book of the Parliamentary Commission" on advanced education, in England, shows that under the old system there, seventy per cent, of the students in their great schools and universities take no real hold upon classical studies. Few will claim that our system of classical instruction is better than that in England. If any of you think it more promising, look at President Barnard's cogent statistics on this point. We make no opposition to classical instruction. We agree that, for those who take earnest hold of it, it is one of the noblest means of discipline and culture ”

“ And so it was natural that he should think a classical education the best education that could be offered to boys, and should desire to see classics, taught in a literary and not a pedantic spirit, the staple of instruction in all those Public Schools, whether of ancient or of modPg 95ern foundation, to which the Upper and Middle Classes should resort. He was perfectly ready to make composition in Greek and Latin the luxury of the few who had a special aptitude for it, therein following the doctrine of Dr. ”

“ For a 'classical education' is something so unheard of, difficult and rare, and exacts such complicated talent, that only ingenuousness or impudence could put it forward as an attainable goal in our public schools. ”

“ We have a scheme of studies, scientific and practical, drawn with reference to the larger number of our pupils who come from the common schools, and who close their studies with us. We take them through an English course, with mathematics, book-keeping, political economy, physics, chemistry, botany, and physiology. And we have also a classical course for a small number of students who are preparing for college. But the exactions of Latin and Greek are so great upon these that they get hardly a smattering of the subjects pursued by the other students. ”

“ But even when we take into account all the youths who receive a gymnasium education, however diverse their tendencies as regards branches of study, we do not find in them so quick an interest in classical studies as would justify us in seriously expecting from it a reaction in the idealistic sense. ”

“ Perish Greek and Latin study!" But what else do we get, or can we get, but that sort of scholarship from the great mass of students in colleges? He thinks that teaching can be improved so as to yield better results, but that has been the illusion of hundreds of years. The failure and defeat of classical studies has been the opprobrium of the universities for generations, and from the time of Milton to the present there have been loud calls for reform and improvement in the modes of classical instruction ”

“ But the same reasons which vindicate the place of classical studies in general education, shew also the proper limitation of them. They should be carried as far as is sufficient to enable the pupil, in after life, to read the great works of ancient literature with ease. ”

“ This is exactly like the traditional study of the classics in this country, as it existed, for example, in the eighteenth century. Men over thirty, even if, in the end, they have secured a thoroughly modern education, have almost all begun by learning reading and writing in old-fashioned schools. Such schools still form the majority, and give most of the elementary education that is given. Every child has to learn by heart every day some portion of the classical text, and repeat it out loud in class. ”

“ The question, What is education? was nearly as hard to answer as the question of which we have seen so much, What is a church? The rival claims of old classical training and the acquisition of modern knowledge were matters of vivacious contest. What is the true place of classical learning in the human culture of our own age? ”

“ In the first place all higher education must be a historical one, and secondly, Greek and Roman history differs from all others in that it is classical. Thus the scholar who knows this history becomes a teacher. We are not here going into the question as to whether higher education ought to be historical or not ”

“ Can a student in the university, with only the history training he has received in the earlier school, enter with proper comprehension upon the study of the Middle Ages, or the French Revolution, or the Reformation? Yet these are examples of the courses offered in the best universities by the best known and the best prepared teachers.
People often accomplish their objects without using the best methods. ”

“ Perhaps they were reserved for the university alone, and there, too, for the professors of the philosophical faculty, as is the case even at the present day with natural philosophy and natural history; nay, logic, which was a regular school study in the sixteenth century, is, in our day, widely cultivated at the university. We must, therefore, in order to form a just judgment upon the range of subjects taught in the sixteenth century, as well as upon the methods of instruction, first cast a glance at the state of the universities of that period, especially in the philosophical faculties. ”

“ In all fairness, one must concede that the 'regular' college course of twenty or twenty-five years ago, despite the preponderance of classical teaching, had gained so far by the introduction of new subjects that it did give a broad aspect of things to the average student. ”

“ Obviously the searching of the heart concerning the values of a college education does not reach to the essentials of the academic tradition. The ancient notions remain ineffable and inviolable. They presume that students exist for the sake of the school, not the school for the sake of the students. ”

“ In our great schools there has been instituted what is called the modern side, made up of sciences and modern languages, together with Latin. The understanding hitherto has been that the votaries of the ancient and classical side should alone proceed to the universities; the modern side being the introduction to commercial life, and to professions that dispense with a university degree. Here, as far as the schools are concerned, a fair scope is given to modern studies. ”

“ In the various new proposals for extending the sphere of scientific knowledge, a much smaller amount of classics is to be required, but neither of the two languages is wholly dispensed with. If not taught at college, they must be taken up at school as a preparation for entering on the Arts' curriculum in the University. ”