Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/314

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294
JESUIT EDUCATION

for a two-year college course, leading to post-graduate training, and a parallel four-year course for such as may desire it. We hope this experiment may not be tried, for its success would mean the disintegration of the college as it has been, and the introduction of nothing to take its place. ... If the American college is still to remain a part of our educational system, it must stand by its old ideals and neither retreat nor compromise. ... If the college would do the greatest possible service to education it should sharpen its ax, not to decapitate itself according to the present program, but to hew out of its curriculum the courses that demand a diffuse preparation in the secondary schools, and out of these latter the time-wasting requirements."[1] The utterances of another man deserve to be quoted in this connection, I mean Mr. Cleveland, the former President of the United States. On October 25, 1902, at the inauguration of the new President of Princeton University, he earnestly warned against "false educational notions," "a new-born impatience which demands a swifter educational current and is content with a shallower depth." Mr. Cleveland declared "Princeton's conservatism is one of her chief virtues, and that we of Princeton are still willing to declare our belief that we are better able to determine than those coming to us for education, what is their most advantageous course of instruction, and surely every phase of our history justifies this belief."[2] It is hardly necessary to point out what "false educational notions" are hinted at. From these criticisms of the latest

  1. Electrical World, October 25, 1902.
  2. From the Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia, October 25, 1902. (Italics are ours, also those of preceding quotation.)