DR. McCOSH ON VOLUNTARY RECITATIONS.

IN the review of President Eliot's Report in our last issue, we gave an extract showing his opinion of the present system of compulsory attendance on recitations. We give below an abstract of an article written by Dr. McCosh of Princeton College, maintaining the opposite view.

In contradiction to President Eliot's statement that the system "is characteristic of American Colleges as distinguished from European Universities," Dr. McCosh says :-

"In all the good colleges of Great Britain and Ireland the tendency of late years has been toward a weekly or daily supervision of studies. At Cambridge and Oxford . . . . teaching is conducted, not by loose lectures of professors, but by numerous erudite tutors . . . . who rigidly insist that pupils be present and do their work."

In regard to Germany "every one ought to know that the foundation of German scholarship is laid, not in the universities, but in the Gymnasien. At these institutions attendance is rigidly required." At all the universities a few only are studious; a large portion of the students take more interest in drinking, singing, and duelling than in study.

It will be remembered that the average age of admission to Harvard is above eighteen. Dr. McCosh says:-

"A youth should be quite ready to enter college at the age of sixteen," and with students of sixteen or eighteen, the temptations to idleness and dissipation can only be counteracted by a system compelling attendance at recitations. Examinations at the close of the year will not check these evils; they cannot make up for the want of a weekly and daily training, and without such training they are liable to the fatal evil of cramming. Moreover, if attendance on recitations is voluntary, instructors will content themselves with giving lectures, and will care little whether their pupils receive benefit or not."

Dr. McCosh has also heard a rumor that morning prayers are to be discontinued at Harvard, and says: "If the Congregational churches in Massachusetts have the foresight and energy which I believe them to have, they will not allow a month to be passed without deliberation to be followed by action. If a college declares that it cannot do the work (the religious training of the students), surely the churches of Christ must undertake it for the youth of their own denominations."