the more certain ought you to be that the end is that which you desire. It is quite necessary, therefore, that you know yourself and your purposes, something quite definite of your capacity and powers, if you are to make a wise selection of your work. In the inefficiency or inexactness of such knowledge the college finds one weakness and one danger in multiplying courses or in enlarging the number of electives within a course. For very few young men know themselves at the age at which they enter college, and I think that others know them less. ... It is because of this uncertainty of purpose and this ignorance of self that the wisest educators and the most thoughtful students of mankind have always given such loyal adherence to the general culture courses, and especially to the classical courses. This adherence does not mean that all culture power is denied to other courses. It is simply an insistence upon that broad and humanizing work which has been and which ever will be one of the best and surest foundations for large and generous life."[1] Nothing less is contained in these statements than a condemnation of President Eliot's electivism. For, if a choice of a specialized course without perfect knowledge of self is a great danger to the college student, how much more to the pupil in the high school? Or, if very few know themselves when entering college, how many can be expected to know themselves when entering the high school? Another remark is most significant. President Eliot asserts that "Moslems and Jesuits" uphold the old
- ↑ The College Student and his Problems, by J. H. Canfield, formerly chancellor of the University of Nebraska and President of Ohio State University. (New York, MacMillan, 1902) pp. 44-46.
