PRESENT ASPECTS OF COLLEGE TRAINING.

In the current North American Review is an interesting article by President Gilman of Johns Hopkins on the "Present Aspects of College Training." The founders of the early colleges believed strongly in the doctrine that intellectual power is worth more than intellectual acquisitions; that an education of all the mental faculties is better for the scholars themselves and for the community than a narrow training for a special pursuit. Acting on their idea the founders of our colleges began their educational system not with schools for special training but with schools of general culture, and the staff of instructors were not specialists but men fit to teach others the rudiments of higher learning in which they had themselves been taught.

The writer maintains that the early colleges, founded with this view, have perpetuated this idea of thorough intellectual training, independent of professional study. To account for the modification now in progress in American colleges, the writer assigns three reasons - the increase of wealth in the community and the consequent increase in educational funds, the influence of science, and the progress of religious freedom. He fears that too much of the wealth, however, goes for the erection of showy building and the founding of scholarships, while but little is devoted for the maintenance of the academic staff. The result of this is very bad, as the writer proves. The professors have to rely for their support on lecturing, writing for magazines, and other outside work, neglecting their courses. Another bad result is that young men of talent, naturally fitted for teachers, are deterred from entering academic careers.

Science, he thinks, has exerted and will continue to exert a very great influence upon the training pursued at American colleges. He thinks the most available and important studies in a liberal course of study to be "Mathematics, leading to physical and natural science, and language, leading to political and moral science." These four elements are the "food, air, exercise and rest of physical growth." Not many years ago sectarian influence was very strong among the colleges, invading the trustees and faculty. Hence we see all over the country feeble, ill-endowed institutions, caring little for sound learning but strong for the defence of denominational tenets.

The writer comes to the conclusion that "the idea of the American college, the idea of orderly training in fundamental branches of learning, partly for the sake of storing the mind with useful information, partly for the development of physical, mental and moral training, seems to stand as firm as ever;" and that "the increase of wealth, the progress of science, and the advancement of religious freedom, though temporary disturbing agencies, are likely to be factors of permanent good."