INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 519 by no means kept pace with external academic organization, and the college president of the external type never was so distant from and so inadequate to cope with the inner work of stimulating his faculty to ceaseless growth, facilitating investigation, insuring the stimulus of interselection and migration between institutions as well as between departments of the same institution, turning from the wearying quest of students and dollars, the notes of which ring in everything done and said, to the many and vast questions now just emer- ging wherever those who love truth supremely and labor in her service and pay constitute the germ of the true university, invisible, not made with hands, but eternal as science, and which is the supreme need of this country. How shall the pro- fessional schools be manned, by those who give all their time to their work, and not by the practitioners, especially in law and medicine, who. give a moiety to it? Until this question is solved, the professional school has no right, I think, to demand college graduation for entrance. Were they strong enough to erect and enforce these standards and apply to the college tests corresponding to those they have applied to the high school, another vast, though also no doubt temporary, stimulus would be given to academic work. Let them take up seriously such questions as distinguishing between pass and honor men, some form of which seems absolutely inevitable. Let them conduct pedagogic laboratories or experiment schools them- selves where they can apply in each topic some of the plans recommended so freely to teachers. Let them try vigorous, able, original men in their pedagogic chairs, and give them liberty, even to discuss college and university policy and with the same freedom presidents enjoy, even though their views may conflict with his, rather than the soft pedagogy now too often given for the special benefit of fitters. Let some large institution lead the way to better quality of work by admitting frankly, as Berlin and Paris have done, that there are grave dangers in numbers and that there are limits of student aggre- gation which can not be safely transcended, and concede that there are higher aims than horizontal expansion, and that the phenomenon of altitude should have more attraction. In a word, let them look up, not down, squarely face the future and step out from the trammeling influence of the past. Let 520 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE them purge themselves of professors who ought themselves to be in the high school, and take more interest in education and less in instruction. Let them add to love and knowledge of the subject-matter the love and observation of student life about them, and realize that adolescence has a new message of humanism to the world from a source richer and more original than that opened to teachers by the Renaissance, and that it reinterprets and enlarges all the traditions of liberal education by insisting that the only way to fit for the next stage is to exhaust the possibilities of the present one.
Perhaps no institution in modern times ever itself needed inspection, visitation, and in general such scrutiny as have been lately given to high schools as the private endowed American colleges themselves. This they have never had, but although the age of their students has increased they have clung to the school methods of lesson-setting, recitation, minute marking, and criticism is howled down by the college yell as disloyal, or if by a graduate of influence, passed lightly as an idiosyncrasy. Such inspection has been done with the greatest thoroughness within a few decades for the universities of Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and England, and in every case it has been followed by immense good and marked an epoch of re- form. In this country the Government will never do this work, but such scrutiny as is possible from intelligent high school judgment below and professional school influence from above is greatly to be desired. Some of these old colleges, whose outer expansion has been phenomenal, have failed of corre- sponding inner growth. Grave evils have crept into college life; student habits and traditions have undergone changes, at the very least, not all for the better. The growth in the num- ber of students has been so rapid that their individual needs are not met. In France and Germany we already have strong opinions against the evils of large numbers. Excessive wealth in a university is also a source of dangers no less grave.
(b) Effects on Secondary Schools and Teachers. — These once had an individual life all their own, but this is now gone, and courses and methods, and even sports and student life, are " made at Harvard or Yale " or other scholastic fashion-set- ting centers, although happily this habit of subjection is not " made in Europe/' where entrance examinations in our sense INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION are unknown. Michael Foster justly claims the credit of abolishing the last vestige of them at Cambridge, and on the Continent the leaving examination of the school itself admits to the university without even a certificate save that it has been passed. Here the evil often culminates in the atrocious prescription of a fixed number of years of study as a condition of admission to examinations, so that talent and intensive study are robbed of their natural reward, and those of whom it may be said the college goes through rather than that they go through it, are excluded till the tale of years in Latin or science is accomplished. Pedagogic originality and inde- pendence are denounced as a whim, and no teacher who fails to fit, whatever else he may do, can hold his place. Uniformity is deadening to pupil and teacher alike. Sadler says " almost every secondary school in England is a type by itself "; it is an idea that to be, understood must be studied in its history. Its principal is a man of eminence and known throughout the country. Here each should have an individuality, a local color, not be merely a building, a corps of teachers, or an institution, but a state of mind. While it should have the same liberty to prepare for college as for anything else, it should not be a feeder nor a mere link in the educational chain. The first result of the college invasion was increase of interest, new topics, a new bond of union too much lacking before; but among the later results has come the sterilization of educa- tional interest. Requirements for admission have in my judg- ment almost ceased to be pedagogic themes, and yet in the later proceedings of high school and college teachers' association meetings, it is hardly an extravagance to say that no matter where discussion starts it always settles upon the technicalities of admission. The themes have narrowed in range, lost vital- ity; great open questions have been closed by colossal assump- tions, and the jingle of the college warden's keys is always heard. The proceedings have lost interest save to those per- sonally and practically concerned. Where this regime is most perfect, qualities of college fidelity and service are brought to the front, and those who study problems and attempt new solu- tions fall to the rear, find their best endeavors slighted and thwarted, pine for freedom, lose interest, and perhaps acquire contempt for their work. A recent writer thinks this one rea- 522 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE son why so many of the ablest young men abandon these posi- tions for more independent careers. There is little incentive to study individual pupils, educational philosophy, or anything else outside the prescribed courses, for what boots learning off the narrow cram-lines, or for those who have lost initiative, autonomy, and personal force. Thus those of scholarship and fortitude labor on, silently praying for a day of relief but slowly stiffening in the mold. The college claims credit for occasionally varying the dietary of requirements to make headway against this process. To some types of character this situation brings a sense of grateful relief from responsibility. They have simply to do what they are told by men whose judg- ment they respect and to which they must conform. So those who should be teachers tend to become exactors of work under absentee legislation slightly mitigated by mutual visitations and courtesy. They are lay figures in the councils of their own government, honored by the confidence of their feudal masters, working under orders enforced by a sure but unwritten pen- alty for insubordination. Those of more supple fiber grow supine, proud to wear the mental, as in France they have asked to wear the textile, livery made for them by the university whose behests they anxiously await, happy of signs of her approval and content to be called good and faithful fitters, loving the jingle of the college warden's keys heard in every joint-meeting, increasingly clerkly, bureaucratic, and it is already possible, as lately claimed, that a majority of them, but not the best, would vote that all but college fitting was a by-product. The hope of the future lies with the minority, now happily growing in power and numbers, who set better examples, successfully resist in their own lives and studies all these downward tendencies, and some of whom boldly and openly point out and challenge them.
(c) On the pupils who should be our chief concern all these evils of the mechanics of tutoring and of the overorgani- zation that kills life fall with greatest force. As \ve have seen, one of the laws of the biological world is that overfeeding is the best known cause of sterility, whereas nothing so tends to make plants go to seed and animals fecund as reduced diet or even slow starvation. Our academic youth have occasion too early to feel the vanity of erudition. Their minds em- INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 523 brace too much but hold too little. The mill-stone of condi- tions about their neck is dreaded, if not experienced. There are many things that it is impossible to do and remain a boy. The Greeks called their teachers inspirers because they deemed enthusiasm the only vitalizer of the mind. To feel that he is to be certificated or passed on what he knows rather than on what he can do, to be held up the first year in the high school by work that is intensely uninteresting, so that most who leave do so at the end of the first year, to have the memory pouches too full to swallow, the reason a little forced, and the mind empty, to be drilled in masses, not to be able to differentiate their sex by being always yoke-fellows with girls in every class-room from which the boy of this age revolts, to feel in- stitutionalized when individuality begins to burgeon, to feel that his mind is going to fat when it ought to go to mental muscle, to have little time for himself which is not occupied in assigned tasks, to work non-excusable knowledge, and perhaps even to have teachers so good, kind, and feminine that he is loth to exercise the prerogative of his age even in deceiving, despising, or defying, with student life at its minimum and work at its maximum, makes a tame life at this age. An undue amount of language work brings to those whose chief training is in words a failing sense of reality. Their minds are spoiled for other kinds of scholarship. They have no stomach for con- tent studies as distinct from those that are formal. With the few best pupils and those least apt to fall by the way in the pre- paratory and perhaps classical courses, taught by the best teachers and kept hardest at work, the residual majority daw- dle. It must be of this most obvious element that Cecil Grant, head master of Keswick, writes in Sadler's volumes, although he deems it true in classics and mathematics as well, an account of the vast number of branches. He says " nothing is more striking to the English visitor in American high schools than the comparatively elementary nature of the work done in the highest form." " This," he says, " is also due to the some- what gentle, give-and-take style of teaching, making no strong demands either upon the learner's attention or previous industry in preparation," and also to the fact that " boys have to sink to a standard purposely set low for girls." l 1 A recent case is typical of the victimization of the majority of pupils by college THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE The chief misfit is between the new public high schools and the old conservative, richly endowed Eastern colleges and universities. Some of them have even joined in prescribing courses in science for which they refuse to give entrance credits; at least three of these a year ago gave no credits in science in their academic courses, so that Darwin and Spencer would have been excluded, and Huxley, had he not known Latin. How many credits are accepted in science, and how few are required in dead languages, is one standard on which this disparity can be measured. Another evil chargeable in part to this cause is the excessive and perverted use of text-books. Here we can learn from Germany even if the opposite habit is extreme. There teachers teach, and do not hear recitations. These I have heard compared to regurgitation of food. The teacher of pubescent boys is almost always a man, and often a doctor of philosophy, him- self a living book, an authority and not an echo, and regards the practise of commending students to self-help in finding out new lessons alone as a device of the teacher's laziness. All study follows class work. Many teachers in some branches forbade the use of all text-books till a governmental rescript was necessary to require their use for reviews. Study hours at school are unknown, and those at home are for revision and details only. Everything comes orally from the teacher, whose method is Socratic and heuristic and keeps every member of the class alert. The books are not crutches for lame knowledge on the teacher's part; small compounds, skeletons, tables, and the use of dictionaries in examinations in languages is often freely permitted, so subordinated are mere vocabularies. It is quantitative standardizations like those described above that aggression. In a public high school a large musical association gave both voca and instrumental concerts with results beneficent not only for members, but felt by the whole school, who were thus educated in this greatest "language of the heart." The normal department of a neighboring college heard of it and bestowed the boon of preparing a course of harmony which conferred entrance credits. This was eagerly demanded by leaders in the association, and one who had other plans actually decided to try for college on this new hope. To study musical theory as prescribed, they must withdraw from the association, which thus collapsed. The college "took in the slack" and the teacher felt honored, but this margin was eaten up to the loss and greater subjection of the school.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 5*5 favor, if they do not compel, the teacher to be more or less of a lesson setter and hearer.
The inherent and historic primacy is with the institutions that train in the teens where education, as we have seen, begins widening up and down with advancing civilization. It is the most plastic, vernal age for seed-sowing, budding, and trans- planting from the nursery to the open field, but this requires an ever longer time during which youth is neither child nor man. Many of these changes focus at about eighteen. To prescribe for these years as if they were simply a continuation of childhood, or as if they were like the college age, minus a few7 years of rectilinear progress, is the fundamental mistake to which many of the great evils from which we are now suf- fering are due. Under the old postulate of Roman origin, that knowledge should be imparted to boys according to a theoret- ically prescribed rrtethod and succession, approved by the mature human intellect on a plan which seems to it most use- ful later in life, college instructors, and indeed too often those in the high school, fail to see even the very existence of these problems. For both these, the high school is an elastic struc- ture connecting the grammar school and the college as best it can — a machine to instil a budget of carefully prepared knowl- edge and thereby convert grammar-school graduates into freshmen. Conditioned by the material ascent up t@ it from the lower grades and by the stints assigned it from above, it is in danger of losing all its independence, and, sheltered thus on both sides, of being the last to respond to progressive influences which so often affect higher and lower grades first. It rarely even considers the question, what is intrinsically best, although the problems of adaptation here are unique and far more difficult than in the college where logical methods are more in order than genetic. No stage of life so demands study or suffers so much from lack of appreciation and knowledge of it. From this standpoint the high school should primarily fit for nothing, but should exploit and develop to the uttermost all the powers, for this alone is a liberal education, should follow the nature and needs of youth far more closely than is necessary either before or after, make this work its vocation, and be the defender of this age against aggression. " The function of secondary schools is distinct in itself and 526 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE.
will one day establish its independent right when it has rid itself of the vicious term and still more vicious idea of college preparation." l The dangers that now threaten are that the work will become mere routine of stated tasks and will seem to the pupil an artificial program imposed by the will of others, the purpose of which he fails to see. He should see that his work stands on the same basis as that of any man, and that it has a meaning and value in itself to which each day contributes its share. Leaders must not concern themselves chiefly with scholastic matters, but rise to the largest views of educational questions. " It is evident that the high school has come to be an immensely significant factor in our American life, raising our standard of living, giving currency to higher ideas and ideals, increasing the range of selection in all occu- pations calling for the intermediate and higher grades of intelligence, and forcing the w7ider differentiation of our cur- riculums by the very immensity and variety of the demands for instruction which must be satisfied." 2 In view of all the facts, what should be the next step? I believe it should be the organization of the public high schools by themselves, or at least with as much care that their interests predominate, as has been exercised in the various joint com- mittees that the college predominate. Their question should be how best to serve one unique age of life, and thereby to do the greatest good to the community and to their pupils. Their problems are as distinct from those of the private or endowed fitting schools as the new English Government schools are from Rugby, Harrow, and Eton. Continental schools are over- saturated with privileges and buy attendance by the increasing number of civil offices open with each new grade, and they bifurcate classes and masses too early and irrevocably. Ours should now rise in their might, win back their sold birthright, 1See a good article by F. Whitton, School Rev., 1900, p. 261.
'See articles on this subject by W. J. Shearer, School Rev., March, 1901, p. 137 et seq. Also my articles, How Far is the Present High School Adapted to the Needs of Adolescence; School Rev., December, 1901, pp. 649-665. Ideal School as based on Child Study; Proc. of the N. E. A., 1901, pp. 475-488. The High School as the People's College versus the Fitting School; Proc. Am. Ass'n of Superintendence, February, 1902. See also G. H. Locke: Bibliography of Sec- ondary Education, Chicago University Press, 1903.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION repay with interest whatever debt they owe to grades above, become more than four rungs in Huxley's ladder from the kindergarten to the university, and help the old colleges, most of which are struggling out of their primary formation, in molting their old soul and bringing a new one to successful delivery. We have had of late some judicial statements, especially from the West, where this reaction is well advanced, as, e. g., in the utterance of President Jordan, that if the public high school wants to fit for college, well and good, but that is not its object. If either bend to the other, the college should bend. The high school should say to it, Here is our product, take it or leave it; we have done the best we are able at this stage. We are reminded that England, that land of examina- tions, long since practically abolished them for the university because, as Mark Pattison showed, they were no test of power. High schools shotild magnify the dignity of their own diplo- mas. The public high schools do not begin yet to realize their advantage of position and power in this or other regards. Let the tides that have so long flowed from above downward now turn and flow upward. From the time they insisted on doing the best they could for this age in their own way, the obstructant colleges would come to their standards within a year. The blood of a new life would flow through their veins. The high school would be, as it ought to be, master and not serv- ant, and in the position of control of supplies. That this next step will be taken and will do great good, I have not a shadow of doubt.
(F) The College. — We have seen that the nineteenth year in boys is marked by the practical cessation of growth for a time, although it is often resumed a little later, by some decline in the curve of health and by other phenomena that seem characteristic and suggest that, having achieved adult size, there is likely to be a period of slightly reduced vigor as if to rest and adjust after being cast up by a flood-tide on the shore of manhood a little exhausted. Faint analogies are suggested between this age and that of the beginning of the prepubescent increment of height and weight. At this point perhaps the in- dividual represents the phyletic stage where, in its survival value in the struggle for existence, the advantages of increased size and strength began to be surpassed by those of a higher 528 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE