Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/56

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THE HIGHER EDUCATION

is accumulating new and rare knowledge. Both teacher and pupil should understand that the latter is under the former as his pœdagogus, to lead him to the higher freedom which is coming. Any attempt prematurely to introduce the methods of the university education, or to lower the standard of the education preparatory to it, will be prejudicial to the development of the true ideal of the university. For example, to lower the standard of minimum requirement for admission to college will have the effect of degrading the high-schools and academies which now fit youth for college, and of either diminishing the whole amount of the secondary education or crowding more of it into the college curriculum. It will doubtless, also, increase the inefficiency and carelessness of both pupils and teachers in reaching even this lowered standard. The similar attempt at Oxford resulted so that, in 1868, Mr. O. Ogle wrote to the vice-chancellor: "The standard has been sensibly lowered, and the proportion of plucks has sensibly increased." Moreover, to convert the college into an imitation of the university—especially in its earlier years, when its pupils and instruction are not, and cannot be of the university order—will secure only the temporary satisfaction which the bestowal of titles sometimes brings; it will postpone rather than hasten the realization of a worthy ideal.

The second difficult practical problem which