The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education Part 8

Inadequate influences induce their decisions. The inclinations of the clique in which a young man finds himself are, without much thought, accepted as his own. Heedlessness is the young man's bane. It should not be mistaken for vice; the two are different. A boy who will enter a dormitory at twelve o'clock at night, and go to the third story whistling and beating time on the banisters, certainly seems a brutish person; but he is ordinarily a kind enough fellow, capable of a good deal of self-sacrifice when brought face to face with need. He simply does not think. So it is in study: there, too, he does not think. Now in college a boy should learn perpetually to think; and an excellent way of helping him to learn is to ask him often what he is thinking about. The object of the questioning should not be to thwart the boy's aims, rather to insure that they are in reality his own. Essentially his to the last they should remain, even though intrinsically they may not be the best.

Young persons, much more than their elders, require to talk over plans from time to time with an experienced critic, in order to learn by degrees the difficult art of planning. By such talk intentionality is fortified. There is much of this talk already; talk of younger students with older, talk with wise persons at home, and more and more every year with the teachers of the courses left and the courses entered. All this is good. Haphazard modes breed an astonishing average of choices that possess a meaning. The waste of a _laissez-faire_ system comes nowhere near the waste of a prescribed. But what is good when compared with a bad thing may be poor when compared with excellence itself. We must go on. A college, like a man, should always be saying, "Never was I so good as to-day, and never again will I be so bad." We must welcome criticisms more than praises, and seek after our weak points as after hid treasures. The elective system seems to me weak at present through lacking organized means of bringing the student and his intentions face to face. Intentions grow by being looked at. At the English universities a young man on entering a college is put in charge of a special tutor, without whose consent he can do little either in the way of study or of personal management.[9] Dependence so extreme is perhaps better suited to an infant school than to an American college; and even in England, where respectful subservience on the part of the young has been cultivated for generations, the system is losing ground. Since the tutors were allowed to marry and to leave the college home, tutorial influence has been changing. In most American colleges twenty-five years ago there were officers known as cla.s.s tutors, to whom, in case of need, a student might turn. Petty permissions were received from these men, instead of from a mechanical central office. So far as this plan set personal supervision in the place of routine it was, in my eyes, good.

But the relation of a cla.s.s tutor to his boys was usually one of more awe than friendship. At the Johns Hopkins University there is a board of advisers, to some member of which each student is a.s.signed at entrance.

The adviser stands _in loco parentis_ to his charges. The value of such adjustments depends on the nature of the parental tie. If the relation is worked so as to stimulate the student's independence, it is good; if so as to discharge him from responsibility, it unfits for the life that follows. At Harvard special students not candidates for a degree have recently been put in charge of a committee, to whom they are obliged to report their previous history and their plans of study for each succeeding year. The committee must know at all times what their charges are doing. Something of this sort, I am convinced, will be demanded at no distant day, as a means of steadying all students in elective colleges. Large personal supervision need not mean diminution of freedom. A young man may possess his freedom more solidly if he recognizes an obligation to state and defend the reasons which induce his choice. For myself, I should be willing to make the functions of such advisory committees somewhat broad. As a college grows, the old ways of bringing about acquaintance between officers and students become impracticable. But the need of personal acquaintance, unhappily, does not cease. New ways should be provided. A boy dropped into the middle of a large college must not be lost to sight; he must be looked after. To allow the teacher's work of instruction to become divorced from his pastoral, his priestly, function is to cheapen and externalize education. I would have every student in college supplied with somebody who might serve as a discretionary friend; and I should not think it a disadvantage that such an expectation of friendship would be as apt to better the instructor as the student.

Before leaving this part of my subject, I may mention a subordinate, but still valuable, means of limiting choice so as to increase its intentionality. The studies open to choice in the early years should be few and elementary. The significance of advanced courses cannot be understood till elementary ones are mastered, and immature choice should not be confused by many issues. At Harvard this mode of limitation is largely employed. Although the elective list for 1886-87 shows 172 courses, a freshman has hardly more than one eighth of these to choose from; in any given case this number will probably be reduced about one half by insufficient preparation or conflict of hours. Seemingly about a third of the list is offered to the average soph.o.m.ore; but this amount is again cut down nearly one half by the operation of similar causes.

The practice of hedging electives with qualifications is a growing one.

It may well grow more. It offers guidance precisely at the point where it is most needed. It protects rational choice, and guards against many of the dangers which the foes of election justly dread.

II. A second cla.s.s of limitations of the elective system, possible and friendly, springs from the need of furnishing the young elector ample information about that which he is to choose. The best intentions require judicious aim. If studies are taken in the dark, without right antic.i.p.ation of their subject-matter, or in ignorance of their relation to other studies, small results follow. Here, I think it will be generally agreed, prescribed systems are especially weak. Their pupils have little knowledge beforehand of what a course is designed to accomplish. Work is undertaken blindly, minds consenting as little as wills. An elective system is impossible under such conditions. Its student must know when he chooses, what he chooses. He must be able to estimate whether the choice of Greek 5 will further his designs better than the choice of Greek 8.

At Harvard, methods of furnishing information are pretty fully developed. In May an elective pamphlet is issued, which announces everything that is to be taught in the college during the following year. Most departments, also, issue additional pamphlets, describing with much detail the nature of their special courses, and the considerations which should lead a student to one rather than another. If the courses of a department are arranged properly, pursuing one gives the most needful knowledge about the available next. This knowledge is generally supplemented at the close of the year by explanations on the part of the instructor about the courses that follow. In the Elective Pamphlet a star, prefixed to courses of an advanced and especially technical character, indicates that the instructor must be privately consulted before these courses can be chosen. Consultations with instructors about all courses are frequent.

That most effective means of distributing information, the talk of students, goes on unceasingly. With time, perhaps, means may be devised for informing a student more largely what he is choosing. The fullest information is desirable. That which is at present most needed is, I think, some rough indication of the relations of the several provinces of study to one another. Information of this sort is peculiarly hard to supply, because the knowledge on which it professes to rest cannot be precise and unimpeachable. We deal here with intricate problems, in regard to which experts are far from agreed, problems where the different point of view provided in the nature of each individual will rightly readjust whatever general conclusions are drawn. The old type of college had an easy way of settling these troublesome matters dogmatically, by voting, in open faculty-meeting, what should be counted the normal sequence of studies, and what their mixture. But as the votes of different colleges showed no uniformity, people have gradually come to perceive that the subject is one where only large outlines can distinctly be made out.[10] To these large outlines I think it important to direct the attention of undergraduates. In most German universities a course of _Encyclopadie_ is offered, a course which gives in brief a survey of the sciences, and attempts to fix approximately the place of each in the total organization of knowledge.

I am not aware that such a course exists in any American college.

Indeed, there was hardly a place for it till dogmatic prescription was shaken. But if something of the kind were now established in the freshman year, our young men might be relieved of a certain intellectual short-sightedness, and the choices of one year might better keep in view those of the other three.

III. And now granting that a student has started with good intentions and is well informed about the direction where profit lies, still have we any a.s.surance that he will push those intentions with a fair degree of tenacity through the distractions which beset his daily path?

We need, indeed we must have, a third cla.s.s of helpful limitations which may secure the persistent adhesion of our student to his chosen line of work. Probably this cla.s.s of limitations is the most important and complex of all. To yield a paying return, study must be stuck to. A decision has little meaning unless the volition of to-day brings in its train a volition to-morrow. Self-direction implies such patient continuance in well-doing that only after persistence has become somewhat habitual can choice be called mature. To establish onward-leading habits, therefore, should be one of the chief objects in devising limitations of election. Only we must not mistake; we must look below the surface. Mechanical diligence often covers mental sloth. It is not habits of pa.s.sive docility that are desirable, habits of timidity and uncriticising acceptance. Against forming these pernicious and easily acquired habits, it may be necessary even to erect barriers. The habit wanted is the habit of spontaneous attack. Prescription deadened this vital habit; it mechanized. His task removed, the student had little independent momentum. Election invigorates the springs of action. Formerly I did not see this, and I favored prescribed systems, thinking them systems of duty. That absence of an aggressive intellectual life which prescribed studies induce, I, like many others, mistook for faithfulness. Experience has instructed me. I no longer have any question that for the average man sound habits of steady endeavor grow best in fields of choice. Emerson's words are words of soberness:--

He that worketh high and wise Nor pauses in his plan, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man.

Furthermore, in attempting to stimulate persistence I believe we must ultimately rely on the rational interest in study which we can arouse and hold. Undoubtedly much can be done to save this interest from disturbance and to hold vacillating attention fixed upon it; but it, and it alone, is to be the driving force. Methods of college government must be reckoned wise as they push into the foreground the intrinsic charm of wisdom, mischievous as they hide it behind fidelity to technical demand.

In other matters we readily acknowledge interest as an efficient force.

We call it a force as broad as the worth of knowledge, and as deep as the curiosity of man. "Put your heart into your work," we say, "if you will make it excellent." A dozen proverbs tell that it is love that makes the world go round. Every employment of life springs from an underlying desire. The cricketer wants to win the game; the fisherman to catch fish; the farmer to gather crops; the merchant to make money; the physician to cure his patient; the student to become wise. Eliminate desire, put in its place allegiance to the rules of a game, and what, in any of these cases, would be the chance of persistent endeavor? It seems almost a truism to say that limitations of personal effort designed to strengthen persistency must be such as will heighten the wish and clear its path to its object.

Obvious as is the truth here presented, it seems in some degree to have escaped the attention of my critics. After showing that the grade of scholarship at Harvard steadily rises, that our students become more decorous and their methods of work less childish, I stated that, under an extremely loose mode of regulating attendance five sixths of the exercises were attended by all our men, worst and best, sick and well, most reckless and most discreet. Few portions of my obnoxious paper have occasioned a louder outcry. I am told of a neighboring college where the benches show but three per cent of absentees. I wonder what the percentage is in Charlestown State Prison. n.o.body doubts that attendance will be closer if compelled. But the interesting question still remains, "Are students by such means learning habits of spontaneous regularity?"

This question can be answered only when the concealing restraint is removed. It has been removed at Harvard,--in my judgment too largely removed,--and the great body of our students is seen to desire learning and to desire it all the time. Is it certain that the students of other colleges, if left with little or no restraint, would show a better record? The point of fidelity and regularity, it is said, is of supreme importance. So it is. But fidelity and regularity in study, not in attending recitations. If ever the Harvard system is perfected, so that students here are as eager for knowledge as the best cla.s.s of German university men, I do not believe we shall see a lower rate of absence; only then, each absence will be used, as it is not at present, for a studious purpose. The modern teacher stimulates private reading, exacts theses, directs work in libraries. Pupils engaged in these things are not dependent on recitations as text-book schoolboys are. The grade of higher education cannot rise much so long as the present extreme stress is laid on appearance in the cla.s.s-room.

In saying this I would not be understood to defend the method of dealing with absences which has for some years been practised at Harvard. I think the method bad. I have always thought it so, and have steadily favored a different system. The behavior of our students under a regulation so loose seems to me a striking testimony to the scholarly spirit prevalent here. As such I mentioned it in my first paper, and as such I would again call attention to it. But I am not satisfied with the present good results. I want to impress on every student that absence from the cla.s.s-room can be justified by nothing short of illness or a scholarly purpose. For a gainful purpose the merchant is occasionally absent from his office; for a gainful purpose a scholar of mine may omit a recitation. But Smith can be absent profitably when Brown would meet with loss. I accordingly object to methods of limiting absence which exact the same numerical regularity of all. College records may look clean, yet students be learning little about duty. Limitation, in my judgment, should be so adjusted as to strengthen the man's personal adhesion to plans of daily study. Such limitations cannot be fixed by statute and worked by a single clerk. Moral discipline is not a thing to be supplied by wholesale. Professors must be individually charged with the oversight of their men. I would have excuses for occasional absence made to the instructor, and I should expect him to count it a part of his work to see that the better purposes of his scholars did not grow feeble. A professor who exercised such supervisory power slackly would make his course the resort of the indolent; one who was over-stringent would see himself deserted by indolent and earnest alike. My rule would be that no student be allowed to present himself at an examination who could not show his teacher's certificate that his attendance on daily work was satisfactory. Traditions in this country and in Germany are so different that I should have confidence in a method working well here though it worked ill there. At any rate, whenever it fell into decay, it could--a proviso necessary in all moral matters--be readjusted. A rule something like this the Harvard Faculty has recently adopted by voting that "any instructor, with the approval of the Dean, may at any time exclude from his course any student who in his judgment has neglected the work of the course." Probably the amount of absence which has. .h.i.therto occurred at Harvard will under this vote diminish.

Suppose, then, by these limitations on a student's caprice we have secured his persistence in outward endeavor, still one thing more is needed. We have brought him bodily to a recitation room; but his mind must be there too, his aroused and active mind. Limitations that will secure this slippery part of the person are difficult to devise.

Nevertheless, they are worth studying. Their object is plain. They are to lead a student to do something every day; to aid him to overcome those tendencies to procrastination, self-confidence, and pa.s.sive absorption which are the regular and calculable dangers of youth. They are to teach him how not to cram, to inspire him with respect for steady effort, and to enable him each year to find such effort more habitual to himself. These are hard tasks. The old education tried to meet them by the use of daily recitations, a plan not without advantages. The new education is preserving the valuable features of recitations by adopting and developing the _Seminar_. But recitations pure and simple have serious drawbacks. They presuppose a text-book, which, while it brings definiteness, brings also narrowness of view. The learner masters a book, not a subject. After-life possesses nothing a.n.a.logous to the text-book. A struggling man wins what he wants from many books, from his own thought, from frequent consultations. Why should not a student be disciplined in the ways he must afterwards employ? Moreover, recitations have the disadvantage that no large number of men can take part on any single day. The times of trial either become amenable to reckoning, or, in order to prevent reckoning, a teacher must resort to schemes which do not commend him to his cla.s.s. Undoubtedly in recitation the reciter gains, but the gains of the rest of the cla.s.s are small. The listeners would be more profited by instruction. An hour with an expert should carry students forward; to occupy it in ascertaining where they now stand is wasteful. For all these reasons there has been of late years a strong reaction against recitations. Lectures have been introduced, and the time formerly spent by a professor in hearing boys is now spent by boys in hearing a professor. Plainly in this there is a gain, but a gain which needs careful limitation if the student's persistence in work is to be retained. A pure lecture system is a broad road to ignorance.

Students are entertained or bored, but at the end of a month they know little more than at the beginning. Lectures always seem to me an inheritance from the days when books were not. Learning--how often must it be said!--is not acceptance; it is criticism, it is attack, it is doing. An active element is everywhere involved in it. Personal sanction is wanted for every step. One who will grow wise must perform processes himself, not sit at ease and behold another's performance.

These simple truths are now tolerably understood at Harvard. There remain in the college few courses of pure recitations or of pure lectures. I wish all were forbidden by statute. In almost all courses, in one way or another, frequent opportunity is given the student to show what he is doing. In some, especially in elementary courses, lectures run parallel with a text-book. In some, theses, that is, written discussions, are exacted monthly, half-yearly, annually, in addition to examinations. In some, examinations are frequent. In some, a daily question, to be answered in writing on the spot, is offered to the whole cla.s.s. Often, especially in philosophical subjects, the hour is occupied with debate between officer and students. More and more, physical subjects are taught by the laboratory, linguistic and historical by the library. In a living university a great variety of methods spring up, according to the nature of the subject and the personality of the teacher. Variety should exist. In constantly diversified ways each student should be a.s.sured that he is expected to be doing something all the time, and that somebody besides himself knows what he is doing. As yet this a.s.surance is not attained; we can only claim to be working toward it. Every year we discover some fresh limitation which will make persistence more natural, neglect more strange. I believe study at Harvard is to-day more interested, energetic, and persistent than it has ever been before. But that is no ground for satisfaction. A powerful college must forever be dissatisfied. Each year it must address itself anew to strengthening the tenacity of its students in their zeal for knowledge.

By the side of these larger limitations in the interest of persistency, it may be well to mention one or two examples of smaller ones which have the same end in view. By some provision it must be made difficult to withdraw from a study once chosen. Choice should be deliberate and then be final. It probably will not be deliberate unless it is understood to be final. A few weeks may be allowed for an inspection of a chosen course, but at the close of the first month's teaching the Harvard Faculty tie up their students and allow change only on pet.i.tion and for the most convincing cause. An elective college which did not make changes of electives difficult would be an engine for discouraging intentionality and persistence.

I incline to think, too, that a regulation forbidding elementary courses in the later years would render our education more coherent. In this matter elective colleges have an opportunity which prescribed ones miss. In order to be fair to all the sciences, college faculties are obliged to scatter fragments of them throughout the length and breadth of prescribed curricula. Twenty-five years ago every Harvard man waited till his senior year before beginning philosophy, acoustics, history, and political economy. To-day the fourteen other New England colleges, most of whom, like the Harvard of twenty-five years ago, offer a certain number of elective studies, still show senior years largely occupied with elementary studies. Five forbid philosophy before the senior year; eight, political economy; two, history; six, geology. Out of the seven colleges which offer some one of the eastern languages, all except Harvard oblige the alphabet to be learned in the senior year. Of the six which offer Italian or Spanish, Harvard alone permits a beginning to be made before the junior year, while two take up these languages for the first time in the senior year. In three New England colleges German cannot be begun till the junior year. In a majority, a physical subject is begun in the junior and another in the senior year. At Yale n.o.body but a senior can study chemistry. Such postponement, and by consequence such fragmentary work, may be necessary where early college years are crowded with prescribed studies. But an elective system can employ its later years to better advantage. It can bring to a mature understanding the interests which freshmen and soph.o.m.ores have already acquired.

Elementary studies are not maturing studies; they do not make the fibre of a student firm. To studies of a solidifying sort the last years should be devoted. I should like to forbid seniors to take any elementary study whatever, and to forbid juniors all except philosophy, political economy, history, fine arts, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and law. Under such a rule we should graduate more men who would be first rate at something; and a man who is first rate at something is generally pretty good at anything.

Such, then, are a few examples of the ways in which choice may be limited so as to become strong. They are but examples, intended merely to draw attention to the three kinds of limitation still possible.

Humble ways they may seem, not particularly interesting to hear about; business methods one might call them. But by means of these and such as these the young scholar becomes clearer in intention, larger in information, hardier in persistence. In urging such means I shall be seen to be no thick and thin advocate of election. That I have never been. Originally a doubter, I have come to regard the elective system, that is, election under such limitations as I have described, as the safest--indeed as the only possible--course which education can now take, I advocate it heartily as a system which need not carry us too fast or too far in any one direction, as a system so inherently flexible that its own great virtues readily unite with those of an alien type. Under its sheltering charge the worthier advantages of both grouped and prescribed systems are attainable. I proclaim it, therefore, not as a popular cry nor as an educational panacea, but as a sober opportunity for moral and intellectual training. Limited as it is at Harvard, I see that it works admirably with the studious, stimulatingly with those of weaker will, not unendurably with the depraved. These are great results. They cannot be set aside by calling them the outcome of "individualism." In a certain sense they are. But "individualism" is an uncertain term. In every one of us there is a contemptible individuality, grounded in what is ephemeral and capriciously personal. Systematic election, as I have shown, puts limitations on this. But there is a n.o.ble individuality which should be the object of our fostering care. Nothing that lends it strength and fineness can be counted trivial. To form a true individuality is, indeed, the ideal of the elective system. Let me briefly sketch my conception of that ideal.

George Herbert, praising G.o.d for the physical world which He has made, says that in it "all things have their will, yet none but thine." Such a free harmony between thinking man and a Lord of his thought it is the office of education to bring about. At the start it does not exist. The child is aware of his own will, and he is aware of little else. He imagines that one pleasing fancy may be willed as easily as another. As he matures, he discovers that his will is effective when it accords with the make of the world and ineffective when it does not. This discovery, bringing as it does increased respect for the make of the world and even for its Maker, degrades or enn.o.bles according as the facts of the world are now viewed as restrictive finalities or as an apparatus for larger self-expression. Seeing the power of that which is not himself, a man may become pa.s.sively receptive, and say, "Then I am to have no will of my own"; or he may become newly energetic, knowing that though he can have no will of his separate own, yet all the power of G.o.d is his if he will but understand. A man of the latter sort is spiritually educated.

Much still remains to be done in understanding special laws; and with each fresh understanding, a fresh possibility of individual life is disclosed. The worth, however, of the whole process lies in the man's honoring his own will, but honoring it only as it grows strong through accordance with the will of G.o.d.

Now into our colleges comes a mixed mult.i.tude made up of all the three cla.s.ses named: the childish, who imagine they can will anything; the docile, so pa.s.sive in the presence of an ordered world that they have little individual will left; the spiritually-minded or original, who with strong interests of their own seek to develop these through living contact with truths which they have not made. Our educational modes must meet them all, respecting their wills wherever wise, and teaching the feeble to discriminate fanciful from righteous desires. For carrying forward such a training the elective system seems to me to have peculiar apt.i.tudes. What I have called its limitations will be seen to be spiritual a.s.sistances. To the further invention of such there is no end.

A watchful patience is the one great requisite, patience in directors, instructed criticism on the part of the public, and a brave expression of confidence when confidence is seen to have been earned.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Doubtless some have carried out the intention of making everything as soft as possible for themselves. But the choices, in fact, do not as yet show the existence of any such intention in any considerable number of cases; they show rather the very reverse.--Professor Ladd in _The New Englander_, January, 1885, p. 119.

[9] As the minute personal care given to individual students in the English universities is often and deservedly praised, I may as well say that it costs something. Oxford spends each year about $2,000,000 on 2500 men; Harvard, $650,000 on 1700.

[10] I may not have a better opportunity than this to clear up a petty difficulty which seems to agitate some of my critics. They say they want the degree of A.B. to mean something definite, while at present, under the elective system, it means one thing for John Doe, and something altogether different for his cla.s.smate, Richard Roe. That is true. Besides embodying the general signification that the bearer has been working four years in a way to satisfy college guardians, the stately letters do take on an individual variation of meaning for every man who wins them.

They must do so as long as we are engaged in the formation of living persons. If the college were a factory, our case would be different. We might then offer a label which would keep its ident.i.ty of meaning for all the articles turned out. Wherever education has been a living thing, the single degree has always contained this element of variety. The German degree is as diverse in meaning as ours. The degree of the English university is diverse, and more diverse for Honors men--the only ones who can properly be said to deserve it--than for inert Pa.s.s men.

Degrees in this country have, from the first, had considerable diversity, college differing from college in requirement, and certainly student from student in attainment. That twenty-five years ago we were approaching too great uniformity in the signification of degrees, I suppose most educators now admit.

That was a mechanical and stagnant period, and men have brought over from it to the more active days of the present ideals formed then. Precision of statement goes with figures, with etiquette, with military matters; but descriptions of the quality of persons must be stated in the round.

XI

COLLEGE EXPENSES[11]

The subject of college expenses has been much debated lately. At our Commencement dinner, a year ago, attention was called to it. Our chairman on that occasion justly insisted that the ideal of the University should be plain living and high thinking. And certainly there is apt to be something vulgar, as well as vicious, in the man of books who turns away from winning intellectual wealth and indulges in tawdry extravagance. Yet every friend of Harvard is obliged to acknowledge with shame that the loose spender has a lodging in our yard. No clear-sighted observer can draw near and not perceive that in all his native hideousness the man of the club and the dog-cart is among us.

I do not think this strange. In fact, I regard it as inevitable. It is necessarily connected with our growth. The old College we might compare, for moral and intellectual range, with a country village; our present University is a great city, and we must accept the many-sided life, the temptations as well as the opportunities, of the great city. Probably nowhere on this planet can a thousand young men be found, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, who will not show examples of the heedless, the temptable, and the depraved. Let us not, then, shrink from acknowledging the ugly fact; extravagance is here,--shameless, coa.r.s.e extravagance. I hope nothing I say may diminish our sense of its indecency. But how widespread is it? We must not lose sight of that important question. How largely does it infect the College? Are many students large spenders? Must a man of moderate means on coming here be put to shame? Will he find himself a disparaged person, out of accord with the spirit of the place, and unable to obtain its characteristic advantages? These are the weighty questions. Only after we have answered them can we determine the moral soundness of the University. Wherever we go on earth we shall find the insolently rich and wasteful. They, like the poor, are always with us; their qualities are cheap. But what we want to know is whether, side by side with them, we have a company of sober men, who care for higher things and who spend no more than the higher things require. Facts of proportion and degree form the firm basis of general judgments, and yet I am aware that these are the hardest facts to obtain. Hitherto n.o.body has known any such facts in regard to the expenses of Harvard. a.s.sertions about the style of living here have only expressed the personal opinion of the a.s.sertor, or at best have been generalizations from a few chance cases. No systematic evidence on the subject has existed. It is time it did exist, and I have made an attempt to obtain it. To each member of the graduating cla.s.s I sent a circular, a month ago, asking if he would be willing to tell me in confidence what his college course had cost. I desired him to include in his report all expenses whatever. He was to state not merely his tuition, board, and lodging, but also his furniture, books, clothing, travel, subscriptions, and amus.e.m.e.nts; in fact, every dollar he had spent during the four years of his study, except his charges for Cla.s.s Day and the summer vacations; these times varying so widely, it seemed to me, in their cost to different men that they could not instructively enter into an average.

The reply has been very large indeed. To my surprise, out of a cla.s.s of two hundred and thirty-five men actually in residence, two hundred and nineteen, or ninety-three per cent, have sent reports. Am I wrong in supposing that this very general "readiness to tell" is itself a sign of upright conduct? But I would not exaggerate the worth of the returns.

They cannot be trusted to a figure. It has not been possible to obtain itemized statements. College boys, like other people, do not always keep accounts. But I requested my correspondents, in cases of uncertainty, always to name the larger figure; and though those who have lived freely probably have less knowledge about what they have spent than have their economical cla.s.smates, I think we may accept their reports in the rough. We can be reasonably sure whether they have exceeded or fallen below a certain medium line, and for purposes more precise I shall not attempt to use them. Anything like minute accuracy I wish expressly to repudiate. The evidence I offer only claims to be the best that exists at present; and I must say that the astonishing frankness and fulness of the reports give me strong personal a.s.surance of the good faith of the writers. In these letters I have seen a vivid picture of the struggles, the hopes, the errors, and the repentings of the manly young lives that surround me.

What, then, are the results? Out of the two hundred and nineteen men who have replied, fifty-six, or about one quarter of the cla.s.s, have spent between $450 and $650 in each of the four years of residence; fifty-four, or again about a quarter, have spent between $650 and $975; but sixty-one, hardly more than a quarter, have spent a larger sum than $1200. The smallest amount in any one year was $400; the largest, $4000.[12]

I ask you to consider these figures. They are not startling, but they seem to me to indicate that a soberly sensible average of expense prevails at Harvard. They suggest that students are, after all, merely young men temporarily removed from homes, and that they are practising here, without violent change, the habits which the home has formed.

Those who have been accustomed to large expenditure spend freely here; those of quiet and considerate habits do not lightly abandon them. I doubt if during the last twenty-five years luxury has increased in the colleges as rapidly as it has in the outside world.

There is no reason, either, to suppose that the addition of the sixteen men who have not replied would appreciably affect my results. The standing of these men on the last annual rank-list was sixty-eight per cent. They seem to me average persons. Their silence I attribute to mistakes of the mail, to business, to neglect, or to the very natural disinclination to disclose their private affairs. To refuse to answer my intrusive questions, or even to acknowledge that college days were costly, is not in itself evidence of wantonness. Small spenders are usually high scholars; but this is by no means always the case. In the most economical group I found seven who did not reach a rank of seventy per cent. last year; whereas out of the seven largest spenders of the cla.s.s three pa.s.sed seventy-five per cent. It would be rash to conclude that large sums cannot be honorably employed.

But it may seem that the smallest of the sums named is large for a poor man. It may be believed that even after restraint and wisdom are used, Harvard remains the college of the rich. There is much in our circ.u.mstances to make it so. An excellent education is unquestionably a costly thing, and to live where many men wish to live calls for a good deal of money. We have, it is true, this splendid hall, which lessens our expense for food and encompa.s.ses us with enn.o.bling influences; but it costs $150 a year to board here. Our tuition bill each year is $150.

The University owns 450 rooms; but not a third of them rent for less than $150 a year, the average rent being $146. These large charges for tuition and room-rent are made necessary by the smallness of the general fund which pays the running expenses of the college. Very few of the professorships are endowed, and so the tuition-fee and room-rent must mainly carry the expenses of teaching.

Still, there is another side to the story. Thus far I have figured out the expenses, and have said nothing about the means of meeting them.

Perhaps to get the advantages of Harvard a student may need to spend largely; but a certain circ.u.mstance enables him to do so,--I mean the matchless benevolence of those who have preceded us here. The great sums intrusted to us for distribution in prizes, loan-funds, and scholarships make it possible for our students to offset the cost of their education to such a degree that the net output of a poor boy here is probably less than in most New England colleges. At any rate, I have asked a large number of poor students why they came to expensive Harvard, and again and again I have received the reply: "I could not afford to go elsewhere."

The magnitude of this beneficiary aid I doubt if people generally understand, and I have accordingly taken pains to ascertain what was the amount given away this year. I find that to undergraduates alone it was $36,000; to members of the graduate department, $11,000; and to the professional schools $6000: making in a single year a total of a.s.sistance to students of the University of more than $53,000. Next year this enormous sum will be increased $13,000 by the munificent bequest of Mr. Price Greenleaf. Fully to estimate the favorable position of the poor man at Harvard, we should take into account also the great opportunities for earning money through private tuition, through innumerable avenues of trade, and through writing for the public press.

A large number of my correspondents tell of money earned outside their scholarships.[13]

These immense aids provided for our students maintain a balance of conditions here, and enable even the poorest to obtain a Harvard education. And what an education it is; how broad and deep and individually stimulating,--the most truly American education which the continent affords! But I have no need to eulogize it. It has already entered into the very structure of you who listen. Let me rather close with two pieces of advice.

The first shall be to parents. Give your son a competent allowance when you send him to Harvard, and oblige him to stick to it. To learn calculation will contribute as much to his equipment for life as any elective study he can pursue; and calculation he will not learn unless, after a little experience, you tell him precisely what sum he is to receive. If in a haphazard way you pour $2000 into his pocket, then in an equally haphazard way $2000 will come out. Whatever extravagance exists at Harvard to-day is the fault of you foolish parents. The college, as a college, cannot stop extravagance. It cannot take away a thousand dollars from your son and tell him--what would be perfectly true--that he will be better off with the remaining thousand; that you must do yourselves. And if you ask, "What is a competent allowance?" out of what my correspondents say I will frame you five answers. If your son is something of an artist in economy, he may live here on $600, or less; he will require to be an artist to accomplish it. If he will live closely, carefully, yet with full regard to all that is required, he may do so, with nearly half his cla.s.s, on not more than $800. If you wish him to live at ease and to obtain the many refinements which money will purchase, give him $1000. Indeed, if I were a very rich man, and had a boy whose character I could trust, so that I could be sure that all he laid out would be laid out wisely, I might add $200 more, for the purchase of books and other appliances of delicate culture. But I should be sure that every dollar I gave him over $1200 would be a dollar of danger.

Let my second piece of advice be to all of you graduates. When you meet a poor boy, do not rashly urge him to come to Harvard. Estimate carefully his powers. If he is a good boy,--docile, worthy, commonplace,--advise him to go somewhere else. Here he will find himself borne down by large expense and by the crowd who stand above him. But whenever you encounter a poor boy of eager, aggressive mind, a youth of energy, one capable of feeling the enjoyment of struggling with a mult.i.tude and of making his merit known, say to him that Harvard College is expressly const.i.tuted for such as he. Here he will find the largest provision for his needs and the clearest field for his talents. Money is a power everywhere. It is a power here; but a power of far more restricted scope than in the world at large. In this magnificent hall rich and poor dine together daily. At the Union they debate together. At the clubs which foster special interests,--the Finance Club, the Philological Club, the Philosophical Club, the French Club, the Signet, and the O. K.--considerations of money have no place. If the poor man is a man of muscle, the athletic organizations will welcome him; if a man skilled in words, he will be made an editor of the college papers; and if he has the powers that fit him for such a place, the whole body of his cla.s.smates will elect him Orator, Ivy Orator, Odist, or Poet, without the slightest regard to whether his purse is full or empty. The poor man, it is true, will not be chosen for ornamental offices, for positions which imply an acquaintance with etiquette, and he may be cut off from intimacy with the frequenters of the ballroom and the opera; but as he will probably have little time or taste for these things, his loss will not be large. In short, if he has anything in him,--has he scholarship, brains, wit, companionability, stout moral purpose, or quiet Christian character,--his qualities will find as prompt a recognition at Harvard as anywhere on earth.