Goucher College - Donnybrook Fair Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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The results ofthe examinations are carefully computed, and those who take honors are divided into three classes. ln mathematics, which is considered the most exacting test of all, there are seven classes, the highest of which is known as The XVranglers -a survival from the ancient custom of defending a mathematical thesis in Latin. The place of Senior iifrangler is accounted the highest honor in the university. The jubilation at Newnham College and the applause of the university men themselves when Miss Philippa Fawcett was proclaimed in the Senate Habove the Senior XVrangler. may easily be imagined. lt is to work of this sort that the women students at Cambridge and Oxford are introduced. Their energies are devoted to one or at most UYU subjects of studv leading to these final examinations, which are the goal to which the ambitious scholar, whether man or woman. looks forward for three years with mingled eagerness and dread. As no candidate is allowed to present himself more than once for these final examinations, the work of several past years of preparation and the hopes of prelerment in future years are staked upon these few crucial days at the end. ln comparing such a system with that which obtains in American colleges for women, one is forcibly struck with three points of contrast. ln the first place. the aim of education in England is to win honors in a fiercely competi- tive examination: secondly, preparation for examination in a single subject leads to high specialization, a process bound to be cramping in its tendencies. unless such danger is carefully guarded against by some means: finally, for women of only average strength and brain power, the nervous strain of the nnal examination is tremendous. Tn America, while the nu-ntal discipline and the self-control which formal and severe examination affords, are by no means underrated, our educators deprecate any tendency to regard the ability to pass an exacting written examination either as an end in itself or as a sim' gmt 71011 of successful collegiate training. The average American under-graduate demands a broader foundation of disciplinary and cultural studies than the English plan affords. lt is true that speciali- zation has increased in all our colleges during the past ten or fifteen years, as a counter-check to the opposite danger of being content with a smattering of unrelated subjects: but to devote three years exclusively to mathematics, or the classics, or even to the natural sciences, would be unheard of in the case of an under-graduate. It must be remem- bered, however, that the average age of English under-graduates is much higher than with us. ln the women's colleges' the average at entrance is twenty-one or above, the minimum at Cambridge being eighteen, and seventeen at Gxford. For these reasons the work of English students for honors bears a greater resemblance to our graduate courses leading to the Doctor's degree. Americans begin to specialize in the true sense and to work independently only after attaining the A. B. degree or its equivalent. ln England the A. B. is conferred on those who merely pass the honor examinations, and the degree counts for comparatively little as a scholastic ornament. iafomen are not given degrees at either university, and while they are continually petitioning for such recognition as a matter of principle, they regard their certificates of classification as infinitely more honorable meeds of scholarship. The difference between the two countries in the aims and subject matter of education is no more striking than the difference in methods of study, and herein lie some of the advantages of the English system. The under-graduate is regarded as a mature student, no longer in leading-strings. He is supposed to have already learned how to study, and he is therefore left to himself much more than an American student. l-lis subject once chosen, at Cambridge for example, he is informedvof the date when he will be examined some two or three years ahead. He is presented with 11

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Wfhile, however, an earl's daughter occasionally goes up to Oxford or Cambridge, it is not yet fashionable for the women of the English aristocracy to become intellectual. ln tact, the very term college education, as used in this country, has no place in the English woman's vocabularyg and when we have analysed the English system of education we shall find why it is so difficult for the English to comprehend the standards of our colleges, and, conversely, why Americans are commonly ignorant of English scholastic ideals. Taking Oxford and Cambridge as types of the highest development of university education in Great Britain, it must be observed at the outset that the object of the average man who goes up, unless he aspires to honors, is the acquisition of social standing and Hintellectual polish, which the mere act of residence on the one hand, and, on the other, a speaking acquaintance with the humanities Qstill termed Literze Humanioresi are supposed to impart. But if he be a man with scholarly as well as merely gentlemanly instincts, he will read for honors, that is. he will select one subject, or group of subjects, in which definite, rigid requirements must be met, he must attain a place above the pass mark i11 a long series of examinations set at the end of two or even three years of residence, and so severe as to tax to the utmost the analytic and synthetic powers of the mind and the control of nerve forces. Moreover, candidacy for these honor examina- tions pre-supposes certain previous examinations. At Oxford, an honor in classics, iorexample, would cover Virgil's fEneid and Georgics, Horace, Cicero, Pliny, twelve books of the Odyssey, passages from Sophocles and Euripides, Demosthenes de Corona, etc.g sight translation from Latin and Greek, and papers on Grammar, Composition and Philology. At Cambridge, the arrangements are somewhat different in detail, and honor men read for what is known as a Tripos, in allusion either to a traditional three-legged stool, or to three brackets formerly printed on the back of the paper. Subjects are announced two or three years in advance, and the final examinations, covering a period of nine or ten days, are set by a special board of examiners, which, by the way, does not include those who have lectured on the subjects announced for a given Tripos. For each paper three hours is allowed. The following list is a sample of the requirements for the classical Tripos : 1. Discussion in Greek of Plato's Republic 2. Translation from Terence, Lucretius, Ovid, Lucian, juvenal. 3. Discussion in Greek of Aristotlels Politics 4. Translation from Pindar, Aristophanes, Sophocles, etc. 5. Composition of Greek lambics. 6. Translation from Quintilian, etc. 7. Paper on Classical Philology. S. Composition of Latix Hexameter. 9. Translation from Herodotus, Thucydides, etc. io. Paper on Ancient History. 11. Greek Prose Composition. 12. Translation from Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, etc. 13. Latin Prose Composition, 14. Translation from Homer, flischylus, Euripides and Polybius. 10

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a list of general sub-divisions of his Tripos, the names of university professors who will lecture upon those subjects, and references to authorities whose works he may profitably consult. He is not left utterly without counsel, however, for lecturers or tutors appointed for the purpose have general supervision of the candidate. Usually each student employes a coach,,' or tutor, with whom he works regularly, especially during the long vacation, and often a mnnber of students combine to take a tutor off to Switzerland or to some seashore resort for a reading party during the shorter recesses at Christmas or Easter. At Oxford private tuition is the chief feature of the system, and it is held to be exceedingly important to secure a good coach.' Many ofthe best students change tutors frequently in order to get a variety of the best instruction. This system of individual teaching draws teacher and student into close relations and offers certain advantages impossible in large classes where the lecturer deals with his students en masse and fails to reach the individual directly. The fees charged for private tuition vary with the reputation of the instructor. Aside from this coaching, the student is thrown upon his own resources, free to select the material of his pre- paration, and to read hard or to be slothful according to his own discretion. A casual visitor observing the Cam in the May term, lined with canoes in which under-graduates, pipe in mouth and novel in hand, lie basking under japanese umbrellas by the hour, is inclined to fancy that life at Cambridge must be quite idyllic and not too great an intellectual strain. There is plenty of fun and relaxation, also, at Girton and Newnham g but those who know the colleges from the inside are aware that many men and most women work with a wonderful energy and concentration when once they set about it. In this they could teach their American cousins a salutary lesson. Except where two or three combine to employ one tutor, class recitations, in the American sense, are unknown. No definite page lessons are set, and a student must use her own judgment in deciding what and how much to read in a given year, and whether to hear lectures during the first or second years, reserving the last terms for reading and reviewingg and whether it is advisable to come up for the long, or not. She knows what is before her and must judge for herself what sort of preparation is best for her, and whether homoeopathic or allopathic doses best suit her constitution. The self-poise and independence of thought and action which result are the best recommendation of the English method. In view of this explanation of the aims, subjects and methods of college training in England, it is natural to inquire whether such a system attracts women in great numbers. The halls of residence at Newnham, Girton and Oxford, and the new hall at Cambridge all together accommodate less than five hundred students, and they are not yet over-crowded. The attendance at our separate colleges for women varies from three hundred to twelve hundred, each 3 and the total enrollment, including universities at which co-education or co-ordinate education prevails, reaches into the thousands. lt is clear that if a rigid honors examination were required of American women, the numbers who seek a college education would be greatly reduced, since the college would appeal only to the ambitious and the very strong. American women who wish to specialize enter the universities at home or abroad for graduate work after they have completed the A. B. course, and many come up for the examinations leading to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This arrangement has, of course, the disadvantage of adding several years of time and several hundreds of dollars to the American womans expenditure for education. 12