Even in the beginning, like the specialist, he is unable to choose the courses he most wants, because of the conflict of the hours of instruction and examination; and this difficulty pursues him year by year, increasing as the subjects to be taken grow fewer and fewer. But let us dismiss this as an incidental annoyance. His fate is foreshadowed when he finds that the multitude of courses by which alone he could cover the entire field of English literature would fill twice the time at his disposal. Already he has discovered that the elective system is not so very elective. He sadly omits Icelandic and Gothic, and all but one half course is Anglo-Saxon. Some day he means to cover the ground by means of a history of literature and translations; but in point of fact, as the subjects are not at all necessary for his degree, and as he is overburdened with other work, he never does.He sticks to his last, and is the more willing to do so because, being wise beyond the wont of undergraduates, he knows that it will be well to fortify his knowledge of the English language and literature with a complementary knowledge of the history of the English people, and of the history and literature of the neighboring Germans and French.
Having barely time for a rapid survey of these complementary subjects, he elects only the introductory courses. In the aggregate they require many precious hours, and to take them he is obliged to omit outright English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but he knows that it is better to neglect a finial or two than the buttresses of the edifice he is building. Again he has miscalculated. After his complementary courses are begun, and it is too late to withdraw from them, he discovers even more clearly than the specialist how very unelective the elective system can be. It is the same old question of the thimble and the pea. These introductory courses are intended to introduce him to the study of history and of literature, not to complement his studies of English. What he wanted to know in English history was the social and the political movements, the vital and picturesque aspect; what he is taught is the sources and constitutions—the dry bones.In German and French he wanted to know the epochs of literature; he is taught the language, considered scientifically, or, at most, certain haphazard authors in whom he has only a casual interest. If he is studying for honors, he is obliged to waste enough time on these disappointing courses to reach a high grade in each. The system of free election is mighty, for he is a slave to it.
This difficulty is typical. Thus a student of history or of German who wants to study Elizabethan literature for its bearing on his subject is obliged to spend one full course—a quarter of a year's work—on the language of four or five plays of Shakespeare before he is permitted to take a half course on Shakespeare as a dramatist; and even then all the rest of the Elizabethan period is untouched.
Let us suppose that our student of English is wary as well as wise, preternaturally wary, and leaves all complementary subjects to private reading—for which he has no time. He is then able to devote himself to the three or four most important epochs in English literature. He has to leave out much that is of importance, so that he cannot hope to gain a synoptic view of the field as a whole; but of his few subjects he will at least be master. Here at last is the thimble that coversthe pea. Not yet! In four courses out of five of those devoted to the greatest writers, the teacher's attention is directed primarily to a very special and scientific study of the language; the examination consists in explaining linguistic cruxes. Literary criticism, even of the most sober kind, is quite neglected. If the student learns only what is taught, he may attain the highest grades and the highest honors without being able in the end to distinguish accurately the spirit of Chaucer from that of Elizabethan literature.
Furthermore, not every student is sufficiently well advised to know precisely what courses he requires to attain his end. For example, to gain an understanding of the verse forms and even the spirit of Middle English and Elizabethan English, it is necessary to know the older French and Italian; but, as it happened, our student was not aware of the fact until he broke his shins against it, and it was nobody's business to tell him of it. And even if he had been aware of it, he could not have taken those subjects without leaving great gaps in his English studies. He has graduatedsumma cum laudeand with highest honors in English; but he has not even a correct outline knowledge of his subject. His education is a thing of shreds and patches.
Whatever may be the aim of the serious student, the elective system is similarly fatal to it. I must be content with a single instance more. The signal merit of the old-fashioned curriculum was that its insistence on the classics and mathematics insured a mental culture and discipline of a very high order, and of a kind that is impossible where the student elects only purely scientific courses, or courses in which he happens to be especially interested. Let us suppose that the serious student wishes to elect his courses so as to receive this discipline. His plight is indicated in "Some Old-fashioned Doubts about New-fashioned Education" which have lately been divulged[5]by the Dean of Harvard College, Professor Le B. R. Briggs. The undergraduate "may choose the old studies but not the old instruction. Instruction under an elective system is aimed at the specialist. In elective mathematics, for example, the non-mathematical student who takes the study for self-discipline finds the instruction too high for him; indeed, he finds no encouragement for electing mathematics at all." The same is true of the classics.
One kind of student, to be quite candid, profits vastly by the elective system, namely, the student whose artistic instinct makes him ambitious ofgaining the maximum effect, an A.B., with the minimum expenditure of means. History D is a good course: the lectures do not come until eleven o'clock, and no thought of them blunts the edge of the evening before. Semitic C is another good course—only two lectures a week, and you can pass it with a few evenings of cramming. If such a man is fortunate enough to have learned foreign languages in the nursery or in traveling abroad, he elects all the general courses in French and German. This sort of man is regarded by Dean Briggs with unwonted impatience; but he has one great claim to our admiration. Of all possible kinds of students, he alone has found the pea. For him the elective system is elective.
The men who developed the elective system, it is quite unnecessary to say, had no sinister intention. They were pioneers of educational progress who revolted against the narrowness of the old curriculum. The nearest means of reform was suggested to them by the German plan, and they sought to naturalize thisin totowithout regard to native needs and conditions. But the pioneer work of the elective system has been done, and the men who now uphold it in its entirety are clogging the wheels of progress no less than those who fought it at the outset. The logic of circumstances early forced themto the theory that all knowledge is of equal importance, provided only that it is scientifically pursued, and this position in effect they still maintain. You may elect to study Shakespeare and end by studying American finance legislation; but so long as you are compelled to study scientifically, bless you, you are free.
The serenity of these men must of late have been somewhat clouded. Professor Hugo Münsterberg, as an editorial writer in "Scribner's Magazine" lately remarked, "has been explaining, gently but firmly, ostensibly to the teachers in secondary schools, but really to his colleagues in the Harvard faculty, that they are not imitating the German method successfully." In no way is the American college man in the same case as the German undergraduate. His preparatory schooling is likely to be three years in arrears, and, in any case, what he seeks is usually culture, not science. "The new notion of scholarship," this writer continues, "by which the degree means so much Latin and Greek, or the equivalent of them in botany or blacksmithing, finds no favor at all in what is supposed to be the native soil of the 'elective system.'" Dr. Münsterberg's own words, guarded as they are, are not without point: "Even in the college two thirds of the elections are haphazard, controlled by accidentalmotives; election, of course, demands a wide view and broad knowledge of the whole field.... A helter-skelter chase of the unknown is no election." The writer in "Scribner's" concludes: "It is not desirable that a man should sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, even if he gets the pottage. If he does not get it, as Dr. Münsterberg intimates, of course his state is even worse."
Rough as the elective system is upon the student who aspires to be merely a scholar, it is rougher on the undergraduate who only wants to train his mind and to equip it for business and professional life. To him a purely scientific training is usually a positive detriment. Scrupulous exactitude and a sense of the elusiveness of all knowledge are an excellent and indispensable part of the bringing up of a scholar; but few things are more fitted, if pursued exclusively, to check the self-confidence of a normal man and to blight his will. Poor Richard had a formula for the case: "A handsaw is a very good thing, but not to shave with." Before taking a vigorous hold on the affairs of Wall Street or of Washington, our recent graduate has first to get away from most of the standards that obtain in the university, or at least to supplement them by a host of others which he should have learned there. In another passage in the article already quoted,Dean Briggs has touched the vital spot. He is speaking of the value, to teachers especially, of the peculiar fetich of Teutonized university instruction, the thesis, and of its liability to be of fictitious value. "Such theses, I suspect, have more than once been accepted for higher degrees; yet higher degrees won through them leave the winner farther from the best qualities of a teacher, remote from men and still more remote from boys. It was a relief the other day to hear a head-master say, 'I am looking for an under-teacher. I want first a man, and next a man to teach.'" What is true of teaching is even more obviously true of the great world of business and of politics. What it wants is men.
The cause of the break-down of the elective system, as at present constituted, is to be found in the machinery of instruction. The office of the teacher has become inextricably mixed up with a totally alien office—university discipline. Attendance at lectures is the only means of recording a student's presence in the university, and success in the examination in lecture courses is the only basis for judging of his diligence. At the tolling of a bell the student leaves all other affairs to report at a certain place. In the Middle Ages, as we have seen, lectures were of necessity the main means of instruction. Books were rare and their prices prohibitive.The master read and the student copied. To-day, there are tens of thousands of books in every college library. Only in the higher courses are lectures necessary or profitable. But still instruction is carried on, even in the most general courses, by means of professorial lectures. Where great periods are covered by leaps and bounds, freshness or individuality of treatment is quite impossible. The tolling of the college bell dooms hundreds of students to hear a necessarily hurried and inarticulate statement of knowledge which has been carefully handled in printed form by the most brilliant writers, and to which a tutor might refer the student in a few minutes' conference. Modify the lecture system? It is the foundation of the police regulation. The boasted freedom in elective studies simmers down to this, that it enables the student to choose in what courses he shall be made the unwilling ally of the administrative officer. The lectures waste the time of the student and exhaust the energy of the teacher; but unless the lecturers give them and the studious attend, how can the university know that the shiftless stay away?
It is necessary, moreover, for the administrator to judge of the student's success as well as of his diligence. Twice every year the professors hold an examination lasting for three hours in each oftheir several courses. Of late years an ingenious means has been devised for making the examination system an even more perfect ally of the police. In the middle of each term an examination of one hour is held to insure that the student has not only attended lectures but studied outside; and, in order to expose the procrastinator, it has become the custom for the examination to be given without warning. Like the lecture system, the examination system throws the onus of discipline on the studious and the teachers. Two thousand students write yearly 32,000 examination books. Quite obviously the most advanced of the professors cannot spare time for the herculean task of reading and duly grading their share of these books. They give over most of them to underpaid assistants. The logical result of such a system is that the examinations tend to be regarded merely as statements of fact, and the reading of the books merely as clerical labor. If academic distinctions are disprized in America, both in college and out of it, this is amply explained by the fact that they attest a student's diligence rather than his ability. They are awarded, like a Sunday-school prize, in return for a certain number of good-conduct checks.
It is not enough that the machinery of instruction wastes the time of the student and debases the officeof the examiner; it is, as I have said, the cause of the break-down of the elective system. As long as each student is required to pursue every study under the eye of the disciplinarian, the decision as to what he shall study rests not with his desires or his needs, but with an elaborate schedule of lectures and examinations. So excessive are the evils of the present system that no less a man than Professor William James has advocated the abolition of the examinations.
This remedy is perhaps extreme; but the only alternative is almost as radical. It is to enable the student, at least the more serious student, to slip the trammels of the elective system, and to study rationally, and to be rationally examined in, the subject or group of subjects which he prefers. In a word, the remedy is to divide and organize our courses of instruction for the more serious students into groups corresponding in some measure to what the English call honor schools.
It may be objected that already it is possible to read for honors. The objection will scarcely convince any one who has taken the examination. It is oral, and occupies an hour or two. The men who conduct it are leading men in the department, and are often of world-wide reputation. They are so great that they understand the nature of the farcethey are playing. No candidate is expected to have covered the field of his honor subject even in the broadest outlines. When the astute student is not sure of an answer, he candidly admits the fact and receives credit for knowing that he does not know—a cardinal virtue to the scientific mind. If I may be allowed a personal instance, I went up for the examination in English literature in complete ignorance as to all but a single brief movement. When my ignorances were laid bare, the examiners most considerately confined their questions to my period. We had much pleasant conversation. Each of the examiners had imparted in his courses his latest rays of new light, and each in turn gave me the privilege of reflecting these rays to the others. For a brief but happy hour my importance was no less than that of the most eminent publication of the learned world. It need scarcely be said that such examinations are not supposed to have much weight in judging of the candidate's fitness. A more important test is a thesis studied from original sources, and the most important is good-conduct marks in a certain arbitrary number of set lecture courses. The policeman's examination is supreme.
IV
THE AMERICAN HALL
Thecollege has shown a tendency, as I have indicated, to divide in its social life into separate organizations for the purposes of residence, dining, and athletics. In the administrative life, at least the proctors and the freshman advisers are each in charge of separate bodies of undergraduates. In the educational life, a similar tendency is noticeable. Year by year there has been an increasing disposition to supplement lectures or to substitute them by what is in effect tutorial instruction. In the history courses, for example, the lectures and examinations have for some time been supplemented by private personal conferences. If the student is proceeding properly, he is encouraged; if not, he is given the necessary guidance and assistance. I do not know what the result has been in the teaching of history; but in the teaching of English composition, where the conferences have largely supplanted lectures, it has been an almost unmixed benefit. The instructor's comments are given a directness and apersonal interest impossible either in the lecture-room or by means of written correction and criticism; and the students are usually eager to discuss their work and the means for bettering it. As the lecture system proves more and more inadequate, the tutorial instruction must necessarily continue to increase, and is not unlikely to afford the basis for a more sensibly devised scheme of honor schools.
If the American college were organized into separate halls, it would be necessary and proper, as Mr. Bolles suggested, to place in each a Dean and administrative board; and the most economical plan of administration, as he pointed out, would be to give each administrator as many duties as possible toward a single set of pupils. Thus the proctor on each staircase of the hall would be the adviser of the men who roomed on it. It would be only a logical extension of the principle to give the proctor-adviser a tutorial office. All this indicates a reversion toward the golden age of the mediæval hall.
Here is where the gain would lie: The administration of the hall would make it no longer necessary to rely on the lecture courses for police duty, and the wise guidance of a tutor would in some measure remove the necessity of the recurrentpolice examinations. Thus the student would be able to elect such courses only as the competent adviser might judge best for him; and if the faculty were relieved of the labor of unnecessary instruction and examination it would be possible, with less expense than the present system involves, to offer a well-considered honor examination, and to provide that the examination books should be graded not with mere clerical intelligence, but with the highest available critical appreciation. Thus and only thus can the American honor degree be given that value as an asset which the English honor degree has possessed for almost a century.
It would by no means be necessary as at Oxford to make the honor examination the only basis for granting the degree. The fewer lecture courses which the student found available would be those in which the instruction is more advanced—the "university" courses properly speaking; and his examinations in these would be a criterion, such as Oxford is very much in need of, for correcting the evidence of the honor examination. Furthermore, in connection with one or more of these courses it would be easy for the student to prepare an honor thesis studied from the original sources under the constant advice of a university professor. Such an arrangement might be made to combine in anydesired proportion the merits of the English honor schools with the merits of advanced instruction in America. With the introduction of the tutor, the American hall would be the complete counterpart of the mediæval hall of the golden age, and would solve the educational as well as the social and administrative problem.
As to the details of the new system, experience would be the final teacher; but for a first experiment, the English arrangement is in its main outline suggestive. An American pass degree might be taken by electing, as all students now elect, a certain number of courses at random. For the increasing number of those who can afford only three years' study, a pass degree would probably prove of the greatest advantage. It was by making this sharp distinction between the pass degree and the honor degree that the English universities long ago solved the question, much agitated still in America, of the three years' course. For the honor men[6]two general examinations would probably suffice. For his second year honor examination (the English "Moderations") a student might select from three or four general groups. This examination would necessarily offer preciselythat opportunity for mental culture the lack of which Dean Briggs laments as the worst feature of the elective system as at present conducted. Furthermore, it would be easy to arrange the second year honor groups so as to include only such subjects as are serviceable both for the purposes of a general education and to lead up to the subjects the student is likely to elect for final honors. For the final honor examination the student might choose from a dozen or more honor groups, in any one of which he would receive scientific culture of the most advanced type, while at the same time, by means of private reading under his tutor, he might fill in very pleasantly the outlines of his subject. It is probable that such a system would even facilitate the efforts of those who are endeavoring to transplant German standards. According to Professor Münsterberg, the student who specializes in the German university is a good two years or more in advance of the American freshman. The spirit of German instruction would thus require that the period of general culture be extended at least to the middle of the undergraduate course.
Some such reorganization of our methods of teaching and examining, and I fear only this, would enable an undergraduate to choose what he wantsand to pursue it with a fair chance of success. It would make the elective system elective.
A concrete plan for an American hall will perhaps make the project clearer. The poorer students at Harvard have for some years had a separate dining-hall, Foxcroft, where the fare and the system of paying for it are adapted to the slenderest of purses. They have also lived mainly in certain primitive dormitories in which the rooms are cheapest. More than any other set of men except the clubmen they are a united body, or are capable of being made so. When next a bequest is received, might not the University erect a building in which a hundred or two of these men could live in common? The quadrangle would insure privacy, the first requisite of community life; the kitchen and dining-hall would insure the maximum comfort and convenience with the minimum expense. Nothing could contribute more to the self-respect and the general standing of the poorer students than a comfortable and well-ordered place and way of living, if only because nothing could more surely correct the idiosyncrasies in manners and appearance which are fostered by their present discomfort and isolation.
The life of the hall would not of course be as strictly regulated as the life in an English college—perhapsno more strictly than in any other American college building. If in the hope of creating a closer community feeling stricter rules were adopted, they should be adopted, as in a mediæval hall, only by consent of the undergraduates.
Such a hall would develop athletic teams of its own, and would produce university athletes. Under the present arrangement, when the poorer students are members of university teams, they may, and often do, become honorary members of the university clubs; but their lack of means and sometimes of the manner of the world make it difficult for them to be at home in the clubs; their social life is usually limited to a small circle of friends. If they had first been trained in the life of a hall, they would more easily fall in with the broader life outside; and instead of being isolated as at present, they would exert no small influence both in their hall and in the university. Few things could be better for the general life of the undergraduate than the coöperation of such men, and few things could be better for the members of a hall than to be brought by means of its leading members into close connection with the life of the university.
If such a hall were successful, it could not fail to attract serious students of all sorts and conditions. At Oxford, Balliol has for generations beenknown as in the main unfashionable and scholarly; but it is seldom without a blue or two, and its eight has often been at the head of the river. As a result of all this, it never ceases to attract the more serious men from the aristocracy and even the nobility. In America, the success of one residential hall would probably lead to the establishment of others, so that in the end the life of the university might be given all the advantages of a dual organization.
No change could be more far reaching and beneficial. The American institutions of the present are usually divided into two classes, the university, or "large college," and the "small college." The merit of the large colleges is that those fortunately placed in them gain greater familiarity with the ways of the world and of men, while for those who wish it, they offer more advanced instruction—the instruction characteristic of German universities. But to the increasing number of undergraduates who are not fortunately placed, their very size is the source of unhappiness; and for those undergraduates who wish anything else than scientific instruction, their virtues become merely a detriment. It is for this reason that many wise parents still prefer to intrust the education of their sons to the small colleges. These small colleges possess manyof the virtues of the English universities; they train the mind and cultivate it, and at the same time develop the social man. If now the American university were to divide its undergraduate department into organized residential halls, it would combine the advantages of the two types of American institution, which are the two types of instruction the world over. Already our college life at its best is as happy as the college life in England; and the educational advantages of the four or five of our leading universities are rapidly becoming equal to those of the four or five leading universities in Germany. A combination of the residential hall and the teaching university would reproduce the highest type of the university of the Middle Ages; and in proportion as life and knowledge have been bettered in six hundred years, it would better that type. England has lost the educational virtues of the mediæval university, while Germany, in losing the residential halls, has lost its peculiar social virtues. When the American university combines the old social life with the new instruction, it will be the most perfect educational instruction in the history of civilization.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND
Inone or two particulars it seemed to me that we might learn from the English methods of training. On the Oxford team we took long walks every other day instead of track work. Our instructions were to climb all the hills in our way. This was in order to bring into play new muscles as far as possible, so as to rest those used in running. Though similar walks are sometimes given in America as a preliminary "seasoning," our training, for months before a meeting, is confined to the track. This is not unwise as long as a runner's stride needs developing; and in the heat of our summers such walks as the English take might sometimes prove exhausting. Yet my personal observations convinced me that for distance runners—and for sprinters, too, perhaps—the English method is far better. Under our training the muscles often seem overpowered by nervous lassitude; at the start of a race I have often felt it an effort to stand. In England there was little or none of this; we felt, as the bottle-holders are fond of putting it, "like a magnum of champagne."
This idea of long walks, which the English have arrived at empirically, has been curiously approved inAmerica by scientific discovery. It has been shown that after muscles appear too stiff from exhaustion to move, they can be excited to action by electric currents; while the motor nerves on being examined after such fatigue are found to be shrunken and empty, as in extreme old age. The limit of muscular exertion is thus clearly determined by the limit of the energy of the motor nerve. Now in a perfectly trained runner, the heart and lung must obviously reach their prime simultaneously with the motor nerves used in running; but since these organs are ordained to supply the entire system with fuel, they will usually require a longer time to reach prime condition than any single set of nerves. Thus continual track work is likely to develop the running nerves to the utmost before the heart and lungs are at prime. Conversely stated, if the development of the running nerves is retarded so as to keep pace with the development of the heart and lungs, the total result is likely to be higher. All this amounts to what any good English trainer will tell you—that you must take long walks on up and down grades in order to rest your running muscles and at the same time give your heart and lungs plenty of work—that is, in order to keep from getting "track stale."
The amount of work we did from day to day will best be understood, perhaps, by quoting one or two of the training-cards. For the hundred yards the training during the final ten days was as follows:MondayandTuesday, sprints (three or four dashes of sixty yards at top speed);Wednesday, a fast 120 yards at the Queen'sClub grounds;Thursday, walk;Friday, sprints;Saturday, 100 yards trial at Queen's Club;Sunday, walk;Monday, light work at Queen's Club;Tuesday, easy walk;Wednesday, inter-varsity sports. The man for whom this card was written happened to be over weight and short of training, or he would have had less track work. If he had been training for the quarter in addition to the hundred, he would have had fewer sprints, and, instead of the fast 120, a trial quarter a week before the sports, with perhaps a fast 200 on the following Friday. For the mile, the following is a characteristic week's work, ending with a trial:Sunday, walk;Monday, one lap (1⁄3mile);Tuesday, two laps, fast-ish;Wednesday, walk;Thursday, easy mile;Friday, walk;Saturday, a two lap trial (at the rate of 4.30 for the mile). For the three miles, the following is a schedule of the first ten days (the walks are unusually frequent because the "first string" had a bruise on the ball of his foot):Monday, walk;Tuesday, walk;Wednesday, two slow laps at the Queen's Club;Thursday, walk;Friday, walk;Saturday, a long run at the Queen's Club;Sunday, walk;Monday, four laps, fast-ish, at the Queen's Club;Tuesday, walk;Wednesday, inter-varsity sports. The chief difference between this work and what we should give in America is in the matter of walking.
II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS
Thevalue of international contests as a basis for comparing English and American training is impaired by the fact that the visiting team is pretty sure to be under the weather, as may be indicated by summarizing the history of international contests. The first representatives we sent abroad, the Harvard four-oared crew of 1869, became so overtrained on the Thames on work which would have been only sufficient at home, that two of the four men had to be substituted. The substitutes were taken from the "second" crew, which had just come over from the race at Worcester. The men in this crew had been so inferior as oarsmen that they had been allowed to compete against Yale only after vigorous protest; but in the race against Oxford, owing probably to the brevity of their training in England, the substitutes pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The crew got off very well, but when the time came for the final effort, the two original members had not the nervous stamina to respond.
The experience of the Yale athletes who competed against Oxford in 1894 was much the same. Their performances in the games were so far below their American form that they won only the events in which they literally outclassed their opponents—the hammer, shot, and broad jump. They were sportsmen enough not to explain their poor showing, and perhaps they never quite realized how the soft and genial English summer hadunnerved them; but several competent observers who had watched their practice told me that they lost form from day to day. Their downfall was doubtless aided by the fact that instead of training at Brighton or elsewhere on the coast, they trained in the Thames valley and at Oxford.
The experience of the Cornell crew, of which I got full and frank information while crossing the Atlantic with them after the race, was along the same lines. Before leaving Ithaca, they rowed over the equivalent of the Henley course in time that was well under seven minutes, and not far from the Henley record of six minutes, fifty-one seconds. At Henley they rowed their first trial in seven minutes and three seconds, if my memory serves, and in consequence were generally expected to win. From that day they grew worse and worse. Certain of the eight went stale and had to be substituted. In the race the crew, like the earlier Harvard crew, went to pieces when they were called on for a spurt—the test of nerve force in reserve—and were beaten in wretchedly slow time. They had gone hopelessly stale on work which would have been none too much in America.
The experience of the Yale crew in the year after was similar to that of Harvard and Cornell. The crew went to pieces and lost the race for the lack of precisely that burst of energy for which American athletes, and Yale in particular, are remarkable.
Meantime one or two American athletes training at Oxford had been gathering experience, which, humblethough it was, had the merit of being thorough. Mr. J. L. Bremer, who will be remembered in America as making a new world's record over the low hurdles, steadily lost suppleness and energy at Oxford, so that he was beaten in the quarter mile in time distinctly inferior to his best in America. Clearly, the effect of the English climate is to relax the nervous system and thereby to reduce the athlete's power both of sprintingper seand of spurting at the finish of the race. My own experience in English training confirmed the conclusion, and pointed to an interesting extension of it. I was forced to conclude that the first few weeks in England are more than likely to undo an athlete, and especially for sprinting; and even if he stays long enough to find himself again, his ability to sprint is likely to be lessened. In the long run, on the other hand, the English climate produces staying power in almost the same proportion as it destroys speed.
When the joint team of track athletes from Yale and Harvard went to England in 1899, the powers that were took advantage of past experiences, and instead of going to the Thames valley to train, they went to Brighton; and instead of doing most of their training in England, they gave themselves only the few days necessary to get their shore legs and become acquainted with the Queen's Club track. As a result, the team was in general up to its normal form, or above it, and, except for the fact that one of the men was ill, would have won.
The experience of the English athletes who came toAmerica in 1895 points to a similar conclusion. Though the heat was intense and oppressive and most of the visitors were positively sick, one of the sprinters, in spite of severe illness, was far above his previous best, while all of the distance men went quite to pieces. Thus our climate would seem to reduce the staying power of the English athletes, and perhaps to increase the speed of sprinters.
It appears on the whole probable that in these international contests the visiting athlete had best do as much as possible of his training at home, and it follows that the visiting team is at a distinct and inevitable disadvantage.
III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL
Thescope and content of an English honor school is well illustrated in the following passage from the Oxford examination statutes, which treats of the final school in English literature. The system will be seen to be very different from a system under which a student may receive honors in ignorance of all but a single movement in English literature.
§ 10.Of the Honour School of English Languageand Literature.
1. The Examination in the School of English Language and Literature shall always include authors or portions of authors belonging to the different periods ofEnglish literature, together with the history of the English language and the history of English literature.
The Examination shall also include Special Subjects falling within or usually studied in connexion with the English language and literature.
2. Every Candidate shall be expected to have studied the authors or portions of authors which he offers (1) with reference to the forms of the language, (2) as examples of literature, and (3) in their relation to the history and thought of the period to which they belong.
He shall also be expected to show a competent knowledge (1) of the chief periods of the English language, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), and (2) of the relation of English to the languages with which it is etymologically connected, and (3) of the history of English literature, and (4) of the history, especially the social history, of England during the period of English literature which he offers.
3. The Examination in Special Subjects may be omitted by Candidates who do not aim at a place in the First or Second Class.
4. No Candidate shall be admitted to examination in the Final Honour School of English Language and Literature, unless he has either obtained Honours in some Final Honour School or has passed the First Public Examination [i. e.Moderation].
5. The Examination shall be under the supervision of a Board of Studies.
6. It shall be the duty of the Board of Studies in framing regulations, and also of the Examiners in the conduct of the Examination, to see that as far as possible equal weight is given to language and literature: provided always that Candidates who offer Special Subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects connected either with language or with literature or with both.
7. The Board of Studies shall by notice from time to time make regulations respecting the Examination; and shall have power—
(1) To prescribe authors or portions of authors.(2) To specify one or more related languages or dialects to be offered either as a necessary or as an optional part of the Examination.(3) To name periods of the history of English literature, and to fix their limits.(4) To issue lists of Special Subjects in connexion either with language or with literature or with both, prescribing books or authorities where they think it desirable.(5) To prescribe or recommend authors or portions of authors in languages other than English, to be studied in connexion with Special Subjects to which they are intimately related.(6) To determine whether Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second Class shall be required to offer more than one Special Subject.
(1) To prescribe authors or portions of authors.
(2) To specify one or more related languages or dialects to be offered either as a necessary or as an optional part of the Examination.
(3) To name periods of the history of English literature, and to fix their limits.
(4) To issue lists of Special Subjects in connexion either with language or with literature or with both, prescribing books or authorities where they think it desirable.
(5) To prescribe or recommend authors or portions of authors in languages other than English, to be studied in connexion with Special Subjects to which they are intimately related.
(6) To determine whether Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second Class shall be required to offer more than one Special Subject.
(ii)Regulations of the Board of Studies for theExaminations in 1901 and 1902.
The subjects of examination in this School are—
I.English Authors.
Candidates will be examined in the following texts:—
Beowulf.
The texts printed in Sweet'sAnglo-Saxon Reader.
King Horn.
Havelok.
Laurence Minot.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales, thePrologueand the following Tales:—
The Knight's,The Man of Law's,The Prioress's,Sir Thopas,The Monk's,The Nun's Priest's,The Pardoner's,The Clerk's,The Squire's,The Second Nun's,The Canon's Yeoman's
Piers Plowman, thePrologueand first sevenpassus(text B).
Shakespeare, with a special study of the following Plays:Midsummer Night's Dream,King John,Much Ado about Nothing,Macbeth,Cymbeline.
Milton, with a special study ofParadise Lost.
These texts are to be studied (1) with reference to the forms of the language; (2) as examples of literature; and (3) in their relation to the history and thought of the period to which they belong.
After Milton no special texts are prescribed, but Candidates are expected to show an adequate knowledge of the chief authors.
II.History of the English Language.
Candidates will be examined in the Philology and History of the Language, in Gothic (the Gospel of St. Mark), and in Translation from Old English and Middle English authors not specially offered.
III.History of English Literature.
The Examination in the History of English Literature will not be limited to the prescribed texts. It will include the history of criticism and of style in prose and verse; for these subjects, Candidates are recommended to consult the following works:—
Sidney,Apology for Poetry.
Daniel,Defence of Rhyme.
Dryden,Essay of Dramatic Poesy, andPreface to Fables.
Addison, Papers on Milton in theSpectator.
Pope,Essay on Criticism.
Johnson,Preface to ShakespeareandLives of the Poets.
Wordsworth,Prefaces, etc., to Lyrical Ballads.
Coleridge,Biographia Literaria.
IV.Special Subjects.
Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second Class will be expected to offer a Special Subject, which may be chosen from the following list:—