Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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Tl)e Specialty stem in tt)e College Curriculum. DAVID STARR JORDAN. The American college was in the first place a transplanted scion from the universities of England. Its course of study for many generations, even until after the middle of this century, was essentially a course of mental gymnastics. Its three pedestals were Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and over these was laid a varnish of Ancient Philosophy. Everything in the course was fixed. No deviation from its requirements was allowed, either to meet the mental peculiarities of the student, or to prepare for the details of his active life. No form of original investigation was tolerated in this scheme, and no provision was made for any form of modern outlook. Some thirty years ago, the need for training in other subjects than those embraced in the traditional classical curriculum began to be keenly felt. Reluctantly the college authorities of the day gave way to it: first by the establishment of inferior courses (miscalled scientific, leading to inferior degrees), and afterward by the formation of patch-work courses containing a little — a very little — of everything that the public seemed to demand. The patchwork course is in vogue today in most of the smaller colleges. Its results are distinctly inferior to those of the classical course, it has in part supplanted. It gives not training, insight, nor inspiration. It renders thoroughness impossible. It violates every law of pedagogy in the interest of versatility. It makes men four-square to every wind that blows.” The reaction from the defects of the patchwork system led naturally to the elective system. You cannot in four years teach everything to every man. Either the college or the student must choose. In the long run the school must give what its students need or demand. The essential advantage of the elective system is its recognition of the law of self-activity. Unwilling work is never effective. Scholars cannot be made by either driving or coaxing. ‘‘The way to educate a man is to set him to work. The way to get him to work is to interest him. The way to interest him is to vitalize his task by relating it to some sort of reality.” In this way, “without losing their natural vivacity, boys become men, bringing to the serious work proper to men the spring and hopefulness of youth.” The great increase in the strength and usefulness of American colleges within the past twenty years is directly traceable to the vivifying influence of the element of consent in college work. The old •M. II. Audcruon.

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DAVID 8TARR JORDAN,' LL. D.

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ideals have not risen in value. The freedom of the student to choose brings him capacity to choose. The willingness of the college to meet all sorts of intellectual needs calls to its walls all kinds and conditions of men to which it is capable of extending help. Its influence is felt in the demand for better teachers. Incompetent, narrow-minded, and fossilized men no longer find their victim in the student. Freedom to choose his teachers gives the student the opportunity to escape the bigot and the martinet. The essence of higher education lies in the character and influence of the teacher. The great teacher has freedom of development only when he is brought face to face with students who have come to him of their own accord. The teacher feels a tremendous incentive to good work when he deals with students who have sought him for love of him or for love of his chosen subject. A great teacher never fails to leave a great mark on every youth with whom he comes in contact. Only in freedom are great teachers possible. In the elective system as developed at Harvard and elsewhere, there is one element of weakness. Its system permits undue scattering. It allows the student to flit from one subject to another, acquiring versatility without real training. This defect the specialty system proposes to remedy. The student is allowed perfect freedom of choice, but he must choose one subject to be thorough in. In some one line, he must have knowledge of the most substantial kind. He must come to know the value of truth and how truth is separated from error. This thorough knowledge of some specialty gives him a base line by which all other attainments can be measured. There is no value in narrowness, but there is a great value in early specialization. It has the same value as early honesty—or early morality. It sets the habit of thoroughness, and of genuineness in intellectual processes. The critical time in the life of the student comes when he leaves the hot-bed of the university for the uninterested and unintellectual environment of the world. If he have not a definite intellectual purpose and a definite mission in life, he will do as the world does. He will renounce, with sorrow for it, his early visions, and the intellectual life will soon know him no more. The essential value of special knowledge is in its inspiration. Its impulse carries the student beyond this danger point. Once a scholar, always a scholar. Give him a message to speak to other men, and when he leaves your care you need fear for him not the world nor the flesh nor the devil.