The same truth has been expressed in very plain language by other American educators. We mention a few utterances of more recent date. President Draper, of the University of Illinois, declared recently: "Children are being told that they should elect their studies. They cannot elect."[1] Professor Peck of Columbia University, reviewing Father Brosnahan's answer to President Eliot's charges, speaks of the latter's "theories which have made Harvard into a curious jumble of college and university, and which President Eliot would like to see carried down into the schools, in the apparent belief that babes and sucklings have an intuitive and prophetic power of determining just what is going to be best for them in all their after life."[2] Mr. Tetlow, of Boston, calls the elective system "elective chaos, and philosophical anarchism," and he lays down these propositions: the students are not competent to direct their own studies; most of the parents are utterly incompetent to make an intelligent choice, too many will readily accept the choice made
- ↑ Educational Review, May 1902, p. 455.
- ↑ Bookman, April 1900.
to know is what they think about it at Harvard." A Graduate Student wrote soon after from Harvard: "I wish to call attention to a result of the elective system which he [Prof. Münsterberg] has not mentioned, and which might even strengthen his argument – a result most disgraceful, yet most common, and whose truth cannot be ignored. I refer to the undisguised custom of electing 'snap courses,' – courses in which, for various reasons, good marks can be made without much work. For the desire for honors, and the fear of being thought a 'dig', are two very potent factors in determining a choice." (Nation, May 24, p. 396.) This statement is not at all surprising; it confirms what intelligent men had expected from such a system.
