I could have my own way, every young man who is going to be a newspaper man, and who is not absolutely rebellious against it, should learn Greek and Latin after the good old fashion. I would rather take a young fellow who knows the Ajax of Sophocles, and who has read Tacitus, and who can scan every Ode of Horace – I would take him to report a prize-fight, or a spelling match, for instance, than to take one who has never had these advantages."[1]
Professor West of Princeton University stated in 1899 that a change of profound significance is taking place in our secondary schools.[2] This change is an improvement, but in reality it is a return to the 'old-fashioned' classical courses, and the writer aptly styles it a 'New Revival.' As one important cause of the change now in progress he assigns dissatisfaction with former school programmes of study. There were too many studies crowded into the programme. In other words, American opinion is moving steadily, and irresistibly, toward the sound elementary and elemental conviction that the best thing for the mass of pupils in secondary schools is a programme consisting of a few well-related studies of central importance, instead of a miscellany.
Is there sufficient evidence, then, that this tendency of things is becoming strongly marked among us? Is attention being more and more concentrated on a few well-related leading studies which have been important in the best modern education? Let us see. Take out all the secondary studies for which statistics are available from 1889-90 to 1897-98:
