THE MAN, NOT THE SYSTEM

In an adjoining column. The Old Dog cites the English college graduate as an educated man with whom the average American college graduate compares unfavorably. Granting this, it does not follow that the Harvard system is inferior to that of Oxford or Cambridge. In England the two great universities are only parts of a large and comprehensive system of education which finds no counter-part in the United States. Most students at Oxford and Cambridge come from one class of society well marked from other classes by its long tradition of cultural activity. This is not true in the United States to nearly so large a degree. Many American college graduates are the first in their line to acquire that distinction, and it is impossible that they should fail to feel the handicap of a lack of higher culture in their early home life.

The American plan is one of mass education. But it seems that good students are born, not made, and that their number is limited by nature to a few. In every American university a small group of students stands out not inferior to the English college man. But these men do not feel an attraction which gathers them all within the walls of one or two institutions as in England. The mass, too, foreordained to get degrees without an education, do not leave college without cultural profit, and by this much the American system may be regarded as superior to the English.

But all systems of education are mere aids, and not means. In every case education must be self-imposed. If the English system is to be defended by citing Matthew Arnold, the Harvard system need not hang its head when it points to Emerson, William James, and Roosevelt.