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AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1866.

THE

DEFECTS IN OUR AMERICAN COLLEGES.

HE recent University Convocation assembled at Albany by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, and the exercises at the commencements of the hundred and odd colleges and universities during the past summer, have led us to a somewhat serious consideration of the defects in our collegiate institutions.

One of the most prominent of these is the want of a high and uniform standard of examination for admission. A few of our older and better colleges do exact a pretty thorough preliminary training, and reject all who do not come up to the standard; but these comprise only institutions which, from their ample endowments and facilities of instruction, are sure of full classes under any circumstances. The younger and weaker colleges, even in the Eastern and Middle States, not only adopt a lower scale of requirements, but do not even exact a compliance with these, and admit young men to the Freshman class, who are sadly deficient, not only in the prescribed classical and mathematical attainments, but in the more indispensable studies of an ordinary English education.

A second defect in collegiate management is a want of thoroughness in instruction. The classical and mathematical instruction at Yale is certainly as thorough and critical as that of any college in the United States; yet how few, even of the students who take the honors, can a year after graduation write a Latin or Greek oration which shall make any approach to classic accuracy and elegance, to say nothing of efforts in Latin or Greek poetry! And if this is true of Yale, how much more is it true of the hundred colleges which have never made an approach to the high standard of scholarship of that venerable institution!

The order and progression of studies is badly arranged. We do not object, as some do, to the confining of the greater part of the linguistic studies of the course mainly to the first two years, for we are satisfied that languages are acquired with greater facility by the young than by those who are older; but it is manifestly wrong to put upon the new student,

who has not acquired the habit of studious application, a severer task than is required in the junior and senior years. Yet there are few colleges in which the studies of the Freshman and Sophomore years are not more difficult and engrossing than those of the junior and senior years. If the college curriculum must be limited to four years, and it would be difficult to add another year, then some of the least important studies should be dropped, and the senior year should be utilized more fully than it now is. In most of our colleges the senior year, the very time that the mental muscles are most firm and vigorous and the mental grasp most certain and comprehensive, the student has comparatively little to do. In some colieges, even a majority of the senior class are absent the greater part of the year, teaching or studying a profession; yet they receive their degrees just as if they had been in constant attendance, the real examination for graduation being at the close of the junior year. If we are to have a four years' course, the senior year should be the hardest working year of the four; and it might well be that the study of physical as well as of metaphysical science, especially in the higher and more practical relations of the former, should be deferred to that year. This would be a great advantage to students who intend prosecuting a further scientific course, as well as to those who look forward to teaching, or to the medical profession; and it would not come amiss in the other learned professions.

The desire to graduate a large class leads many of our colleges to be lax in their annual examinations and their examinations for gradua tion. Very few of our colleges remand the delinquent and incompetent scholars of each class to the ranks of the class below. The greater part go through the farce of passing those who have failed utterly, speciali gratia, making a pretence of requiring them to make up during vacation for their deficiencies. This is but a pretence, and the result is that almost every college graduates annually from three to a dozen blockheads,-young men who have managed to get through college, without acquiring even the rudiments of an education. How much better is even such severity as is practiced at West Point, where the class which entered a hundred strong seldom graduates more than from thirty to forty!

Another fault in our colleges, and the last one we shall now particularize, is, their perfect recklessness in conferring honorary degrees. The honorary degree of Master of Arts, which formerly possessed some value, but now from its cheapness is really worthless, is conferred in hundreds of instances on men who only possess the single art of fawning on some trustee, fellow, or member of the faculty. A skilful mechanic, who has

made a successful machine, is dubbed M.A., when the only art he possesses or is master of, is that of invention. Or some man who possesses a natural gift for mathematics, and who on almost every other subject is nearly an idiot, is authorized to add M.A. to his name. Amid these many misapplications, there is, indeed, now and then an instance where a man, partially or wholly self-taught, has struggled up to a grade of attainment in literature, science, or art, or all combined, which makes him fully the peer of the best graduates of the college which reflects honor upon itself in conferring the title upon one so deserving. But these are the few and rare exceptions, and do not cover one tithe of the cases where this honorary degree is conferred.

If the Master's degree is so often misapplied, and its announcement so often brings reproach upon the colleges, how much worse is the misapplication of the higher degrees of D.D. and LL.D. The "semi-lunar fardels," as Dr. Cox used to call them, descend now upon the shoulders of men who are not learned in divinity or qualified to teach that or any thing else. Of the two hundred and fifty, more or less, doctors of divinity, ground out annually, some of them by female colleges, and some by colleges which seem to maintain a precarious existence merely for the purpose of conferring honorary degrees, it is safe to say that fully one-half are unworthily bestowed. In Europe, except in the Scottish universities, which are somewhat lax in this respect, the title of D.D. means something; it is either received in course, as in the Continental universities, after a long course of theological study and a severe examination; or if bestowed causa honorariis, it recognizes the man on whom it is conferred as eminent for scholarship, and especially for biblical or theological learning. How is it here? How many of our D.D.'s know little Latin and less Greek? How many are innocent of any knowledge of either, or of any other language except their own? How many lack a decent acquaintance with English grammar or composition? The conferring of a high degree so unworthily is a disgrace to a college. It degrades it in the eyes of the community, and weakens its moral power.

The abuse of the degree of Doctor of Laws has been equally gross and disgraceful. The fashion of conferring this degree upon every President of the United States, and every governor of a State, or prominent general in the army, is one more honored in the breach than in the observance. Abraham Lincoln was an admirable President; but was he so profoundly versed in the civil and ecclesiastical laws of his own country and Europe as to be entitled to the degree of Legis Legum Doctor? Has

Andrew Johnson any better claim to it? Does Parson Brownlow come up to our ideal of a Doctor of Laws? Generals Grant and Hancock and Admiral Farragut are worthy and excellent commanders, entitled to the highest honors in their particular departments of the public service; but we think either of them would prefer to go into as hot an action as they ever fought, rather than attempt to expound either ecclesiastical or civil law.

But the perversions of this title do not stop here. Within a dozen years it has been bestowed on scores if not hundreds of persons whose attainments gave them not the slightest claim to it. Manufacturers of elementary school-books, some of them, men who had taken up the business after failing in trade; men, whose books showed them to be as ignorant of the laws of language as of other laws, have been dubbed Doctors of Laws-for what reason, unless it was a pecuniary one, it would be difficult to say. A bookwright of the lowest capacity, whose books were made wholly with the scissors, for years before his decease, wrote LL.D. after his name, and, we suppose, rightfully, though it would be hard to imagine what could have induced a college to confer it upon him. Peripatetic lecturers on some branch of physical science, have considered the LL.D. a desirable addition to their resources, and colleges have been found complaisant enough to coufer it. An enterprising young man, in a neighboring city, who by dint of the "magnificently monotonous" style of advertising, had succeeded in creating for himself a large and flourishing business, and though possessing but an ordinary education, fancied that it would add to his éclat to be made a Doctor of Laws, and having, fortunately, a kinsman at the head of a Female College, speedily received from that source the right to put the magic letters after his name. can hardly blame the young man for his aspiring ambition, however illplaced we may deem its object; but what can be said for the college guilty of such a perversion of its university powers, and what moral right had a college or university, intended exclusively for female education, to confer degrees, which from their very nature imply the existence in it of a department of legal instruction? The demoralizing effect of such action is not confined to the institution which is guilty of it; it tends to the degradation of learning, by prostituting its honors and rewards to unworthy objects; and while such a course is pursued we may look in vain for any elevation of our higher education, or any earnest zeal in the prosecution of study, save as this brings to the student its own reward.

We

IN

PUBLIC WILL.

N all places and countries, and under every form of government, public will, or the determination of the majority, is an element of power; but it holds supreme sway over us-socially as well as politically it is the controlling element of this Republic. It is proper that this should be the case, otherwise we should be no democracy. Those, therefore, whose duty it is to protect their special interest against its perverted uses, must take their chance of obtaining victory or suffering defeat from the encounter. He who strives to serve humanity as a remover of abuses must inevitably commence his attack with powers numerically inferior to those of his adversary; otherwise he can lay no just claim to the honored name of a reformer.

It may be said, that it is not the part of those engaged in scholastic affairs to canvass the shortcomings of the adult public will, the right tuition of which is strictly the province of the clergy. The force of this statement is admitted; and we are glad that the frivolity and immorality of the masses cannot be laid to the charge of the schoolmaster. But where a vitiated public will invades our proper specialty, we shall hold it to be our duty to defend the cause of the little ones and their instructors, whose organ we are, by every means in our power.

It was for this reason the article in our late number headed" Keys to Success in Scholastic Enterprises" was inserted. In other words, it was published to prevent the further immolation of the best interests of our children to the Moloch of Fashion. The careful reader of it will perceive that the evils complained of in it are not treated of as solely chargeable to our fraternity. To obtain a little money by amusing rather than instructing youth, is no very heinous sin, especially when such crime is committed to the inexorable requirements of the public will, which latterly has demanded show in place of reality, exhibition instead of instruction. We are aware that many very faithful teachers have battled in vain against the errors complained of, and it may also be our fate to see no present results from our endeavors. Nevertheless, with approving conscience and hope for the best, we intend to continue it. To that end, we purpose soon to examine the very important question of the reciprocal duties of parents and school teachers.

WE should give as we receive, cheerfully, and without hesitation; there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

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