The American College: A Criticism |
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ABRAHAM FLEXNER activities actual American college ary school assistant basis boy's capacity Carnegie Foundation cation cern choice cial classical concrete course curriculum definite develop distinct educa effect elective sys elective system elementary energy entire entrance examinations equally experience fact field Freshman fundamental graduate departments graduate school graduate student Harvard HARVARD COLLEGE hence high school ical individual institutions instruction instructor intel intellectual intelligent interest ized largely Latin law school lecture lege Leland Stanford Jr less means ment methods modern ness object ondary school opportunity organized partment pedagogical Phi Beta Kappa practically prepara preparatory education preparatory school President Princeton problems professional schools purpose question quirements radical Report scheme secondary school situation social standards teacher teaching thing tically tion tional tive ture undergraduate vard vidual wholly Yale
Popular passages
Page 23 - After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.
Page 221 - The motive on which the college vainly relies, self-realization, has got to be rendered operative at the earlier stage." "As a matter of fact," he adds, "the secondary period is far more favorable than the college to free exploration of the boy.
Page 125 - ... and limited beforehand. For almost any intellectual employment in later life, it seems to me that this discipline was valuable. I am, however, not the less conscious how ludicrous was the mode in which, in my tenth year, I obtained it.
Page 11 - — " is to realize that the American college is deficient, and unnecessarily deficient, alike in earnestness and in pedagogical intelligence ; that in consequence our college students are, and for the most part, emerge, flighty, superficial, and immature, lacking, as a class, concentration, seriousness and thoroughness.
Page 6 - The college is without clear-cut notions of what a liberal education is and how it is to be secured, . . . and the pity of it is that this is not a local or special disability, but a paralysis affecting...
Page 16 - A youth may win his degree on a showing that would in an office cost him his desk
Page 214 - ... scheme fails for lack of sufficient insight; in the first place, because the preparatory school routine, devised by the college, suppresses just what the college assumes that it will develop ; in the second place, because of the chaotic condition of the college curriculum ; finally, because research has largely appropriated the resources of the college, substituting the methods and interest of highly specialized investigation for the larger objects of college teaching.
Page 75 - Greek is a concession to the educational Tories ; science, an offset, to placate the radicals; and mathematics offers homage to "drill." Every item is a separate scrap; the whole is a patchwork, suggesting in its method of composition, a political platform rather than a rational educational program.
Page 141 - ... system does well enough for the seriously minded. What does it do for his brother, of opposite inclination? asks Mr. Flexner. "It simply furnishes him an abundant opportunity to exercise a low ingenuity in picking his way to a degree with the least exertion, the least inconvenience in the way of hours, the least shock to the prejudices which function for him in place of ideas, tastes, and convictions. He comes out at the spout as he went in at the hopper, — except for the additional moral havoc...
Page 92 - ... as at present taught in schools, do not provide firm training for the mind, and that the fault is not wholly in the teaching but lies partly in the unsettled character of the subjects themselves. The New Method proclaims that of any two studies efficiently taught for the same length of time one is about as good as another and deserves equal recognition in a scheme of examinations.