AMERICAN COLLEGE, The. Its Place and Importance.— The American college has no exact counterpart in the educational system of any other country, although its elements are derived from European systems, and in partic ular from Great Britain. And while it is true that the primary form of organization in our earliest colleges, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, was inherited from the English Uni versity of Cambridge, still it was subjected to modification at the very beginning, to adapt the college to its community, and afterward it was progressively modified to assure close sym pathy with the character of the growing Ameri can nation. The result is an institution with derived elements of composition and in less degree of form, which has developed for itself an organization notably different from the old world schools.
So the college, from the nature of its devel opment, holds the central place in the historic growth of American higher education. It re mains to-day the one repository and shelter of liberal education as distinguished from technical or commercial training, the only available foun dation for the erection of universities containing faculties devoted to the maintenance of pure learning, and the only institution which can furnish the preparation which is always desired, even though it is not yet generally exacted, by Professional schools. Singularly enough, the relation of directive influence sustained to-day by our colleges to the university problem is not unlike the relation held in the Middle Ages by the inferior faculty of arts at the University of Paris to the affairs of the university as a whole. In both cases the college, or faculty of arts, appears as the preliminary instructor in the essentials of liberal education; this ear lier education is recognized as the proper re9ui site for later study in the professional faculties•; and in both cases the inferior faculty contains the germ of the higher university faculty of pure learning, the faculty of arts, sciences and philosophy. The reason for this similarity is that the American college in this respect per petuates and develops a fundamental tradition of liberal learning, which found its way from Paris through Oxford to Cambridge and then from Cambridge to our shores. The parallel of our college history with the Old-World history holds good in other important respects. Still, in order to understand the precise nature and unique influence of the college in.American edu cation, it is not necessary to trace the story of its development, for in its various forms of present organization it reveals the normal type which has been evolved, survivals of past stages of development, instances of variation and even of degeneration from the type, and interesting present experiments which foreshadow the future. •
The Old-fashioned College.— The three commonly accepted divisions of education into primary, secondary and higher stages, while fully recognized in America, are not followed rigorously in organization. Primary education is more clearly separable from secondary than secondary from the higher or university stage. The chief cause for this partial blending of the secondary and higher stages is the college. However illogical and indefensible such a mix ture may appear, the historical outworking of this partial blending has been compelled by the exigencies of our history and has been fruitful in good results.
The American college, then, as contrasted with European schools, is a composite thing partly secondary and partly higher in its organ ization. It consists regularly of a four-year course of study leading to the bachelor's degree. Up to the close of the Civil War (1861-65) it was mainly an institution of secondary educa tion, with some anticipations of university stud ies toward the end of the course, which, how ever, were usually taught as rounding out the course of disciplinary education, rather than as subjects of free investigation. The average age of graduation was about 20. The maximum course of preparation in secondary schools was four years. In the better schools they studied Latin and Greek grammar, four books of Ciesar, six books of Virgil's 2Eneid, six orations of Cicero, three books of Xenophon's Anabasis and two of Homer's Iliad, together with arithmetic, plane geometry (not always complete) and alge bra to, or at most through, quadratic equations, This the stronger colleges required for en trance; but many weaker ones were compelled to teach some of these preparatory studies in the first two years of the college course. With few and unimportant exceptions the four-year course consisted of prescribed studies, including Eng lish literature and rhetoric, Latin, Greek, mathe matics, natural philosophy, chemistry, the ele ments of deductive logic, moral philosophy and political economy, and often a little psychology and metaphysics. Perhaps some ancient or gen eral history was added. French and German were sometimes scantily taught. At graduation the student received the degree of bachelor of arts, and then entered some professional school, or went into business or into teaching in the primary or secondary schools.