of the high school and college? Aside from the champions of extreme electivism, there is no educator of note who does not consider general culture the function of the high school. A great number of prominent educators do not hesitate to assign the same function to the college, relegating specialization, the acquisition of scholarship, or professional skill, entirely, or for the main part, to the university. The college should concern itself with the final stage of secondary education; it ought to stimulate general culture and to train character, rather than to impart specific instruction. A college President declared that the first step towards a betterment is the reassertion of the aim and nature of college life. The university, demanding for entrance a bachelor's degree, is the crown of our educational system. Its province is higher education, the cultivation of advanced scholarship and research. But "the college should give itself no airs. It should not pretend to be a university."[1]
It needs scarcely be stated that the Jesuits' view of the college is exactly the same. They assign no other function, no other aim to it than general culture, harmonious training of the mind.
- ↑ President Jones of Hobart College, in the Forum, January 1901: Is the College Graduate Impracticable? – The greatest difficulty in this country lies in the fact that pupils go too late to the high school or college. The study of Latin should be commenced at the age of ten or twelve years, instead of thirteen or fourteen. See Dr. Stanley Hall, Forum, Sept. 1901; and below ch. XVI, § 1. – The same is advocated by Professor Nightingale in the Report of the Conference on English, read before the National Association of Education, at Ashbury Park, N. J., 1894. German boys begin with nine or ten years, why should not the clever American boy be able to begin with ten or eleven?
