CHAPTER XVI EDUCATION AND SCIENCE AMERICA has as yet no national system of education. The educational advantages provided vary a good deal in different States-for each State provides and supervises its own system in entire independence. Yet, underlying all difference of method, there is an essential unity of aim, which is "to make democratic education universally accessible, and by means of it to lift up whole population to a higher plane of intelligence, conduct, and happiness." the As Dr. Eliot, President of Harvard University, points out, "Democratic education is a very new thing in the world, and its attainable objects are not yet fully perceived. Only a generation ago in some of our Southern States it was a crime to teach a member of the laborious class to read." From the elementary school to the university education in the States is to a large extent gratuitous. This is due in a great measure to the sums and land revenues set apart by the several States and to other legislative provision, and next to the enormous contributions made to higher education by opulent citizens of the republic. Mr. Cobden noticed the liberality of American citizens in promoting education. Since his time private munificence in this cause has exceeded anything hitherto known.1 Yet, in spite of all this liberality, many of the men foremost in the business world of America have expressed the view that a university education rather unfits men to succeed in business. Mr. Carnegie is quoted as saying "The almost total absence of the graduate from high positions in the business world seems to justify the conclusion that college education, as it exists, is fatal to success in that domain. The 1 Subjoined is a list of the reported benefactions made in the last eleven years: 1890-1891 ... £1,515,018 Total Here are some of the institutions to which special benefactions have been made: Chicago University, by J. D. Rockefeller (from 1889 to 1900) Chicago University, by Miss Emmons Blaine ... 2,200,000 600,000 200,000 Colgate University, by James B. Colgates... Columbia University, by Seth Low Dartmouth College, by Edward Tuck Leland Stanford University, by Mrs. Leland Stanford Washington University, St. Louis, by Samuel Cupples and Robert Harvard University, by J. Pierpont Morgan Carnegie Institution, Washington, by Andrew Carnegie ... graduate has not the slightest chance, entering at twenty, against the boy who swept the office, or who begins as shipping clerk at fourteen. The facts prove this." It is said that the average age of entering business of the most successful men in America, such as Messrs. Wanamaker, Vanderbilt, Peabody, Armour, and others, was sixteen and a half, and the age of entering into partnership twenty-two. Mr. Henry Clews remarks— "I do not employ college men in my banking office; none need apply. I don't want them, for I think they have been spoiled for a business life. The college man is not willing to begin at the bottom. He looks down on the humble places, which he is fitted to fill. And, indeed, he looks down on all business as dull and unattractive. . . . His thoughts are not with his business, but with his books, literature, philosophy, Latin. Now, no man can approach the exacting business life. in that half-hearted way. Business requires the undivided mind." It is observed, however, that the objections of these captains of industry, many of whom have been liberal donors to the various State universities, to college education were usually somewhat qualified by the phrase as it now is." Moreover, it was universally admitted that for professional men the old university ideal was a good one. Of late years a decided effort has been made to forward technical education both in the high schools and in the universities, and to establish a complete system of commercial and business training.1 1 Mr. Thistelton Mark has recently furnished detail of the equipment and work done by such establishments as the Armour Institute of Chicago, the Bradley Institute of Peoria, the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, the Lawrence School at Harvard, the School of Mines at Columbia University, But now for the other side of the picture. In spite of the progress of the last ten years, it is quite fatuous to speak of the higher Educational System of America being worthy of our own or anybody's example. President Harper, of Chicago University, confesses quite frankly, that "the field of higher education in America is at the present time is an exceedingly disorganized condition." 1 A university in America does not generally mean what we regard as a university. There are hundreds of academies, too, which are called colleges. Let us take a casual peep into the administration. To English ideas a professor's life at a university should be in the nature of a freehold. In America, on the other hand, there is too much immobility-not enough fixity of tenure. The reason is, of course, to be found in the fact that, with a few exceptions (such as Yale), there is no self-government granted to an American University. In academic as in political life, the tendency is to oneman power. In the State Universities and in those and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the latter having been described as 66 the finest technical institution in the world." It seems that twenty-one years ago a School of Finance and Economy was founded in connection with the University of Pennsylvania, with the help of a gift of $100,000 by Mr. Joseph Wharton, and since 1898, largely under the stimulus of foreign example, the Universities of Chicago, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Vermont, Dartmouth College, and finally Harvard, have established special schools or schemes for higher commercial teaching. The innovation has been received with favour. The total number of commercial students in schools and colleges reported to the Bureau of Education rose from 131,518 in 1898–1899 to 190,698 in 1899-1900. Technical education, apart from the universities, has been handsomely endowed of late years in the United States. 1 A Bachelor of Arts from one university has been known to enter the "Preparatory Department" of another, where the best part of a year was needed to fit him for admission to the freshman class. privately endowed or supported by religious denominations, the teaching staff is ruled despotically by a president, who acts as the vizier of the millionaire benefactor or "" 'regent," "trustees," etc., who rarely interfere with his decisions.1 Nearly all academic institutions are virtually controlled, as we may already have inferred, by capitalistic influences. This is productive of effects far from salutary both upon the teaching staff and upon the pupils, but the time is not yet at hand when public opinion even partially realizes the consequences of their faulty organization. On the subject of social distinctions in the common schools, Rev. Cecil Grant says 'Though the conditions of American society are of necessity widely different from our own, the educated American is no less aware than ourselves of the worth of culture, and were it found that the mixing of the social strata in their schools caused a general levelling down of manners, or that their daughters ran a risk of undesirable entanglements, the higher class of Americans would most certainly not send them to the common schools as universally as they do. As a matter of fact, the writer's own observation, supported by the unanimous testimony of all whom he had the opportunity of consulting, was to the effect that, whereas the levelling up was most surprisingly apparent, no signs of the reverse process were to be detected. "At school, as at college, idleness is tempered by the commercial instinct. The boy drinks in with his mother's milk the creed that success in life is life's main object, and that to succeed one must work. The writer was told, as an instance of the importance attached to educational success, that in Harvard for some time there had been an average of one suicide yearly after 1 This system has its advantages from a pecuniary standpoint, as in 19001901 it realized £3,500,000 in academic endowments in America. |