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not impressed by Longfellow's lectures on German poetry. Hoar (at Harvard from 1842) found the instruction of little value, and grammatical study of classical authors not conducive to understanding or love of the classics. Charles Eliot Norton (at Harvard from 1842) felt that the system at college wasted opportunities . Roosevelt (1876-80) did not find the kind of teaching he would have profited from, especially in economics.' We have also the profound criticism by Henry Adams of the system under which he was educated. A student at Harvard from 1854-58, he has this to say of his Alma Mater:

'For generation after generation, Adamses and Brookses and Boylstons and Gorhams had gone to Harvard College, and although none of them, as far as known, had ever done any good there, or thought himself the better for it, custom, social ties, convenience, and, above all, economy kept each generation in the track. Any other education would have required a serious effort, but no one took Harvard College seriously. All went there because their friends went there, and the College was their ideal of social self-respect . . . ... Sometimes in after life, Adams debated whether in fact it had not ruined him and most of his companions, but disappointment apart, Harvard College was probably less hurtful than any other University then in existence. It taught little, and that little ill, but it left the mind open, free from bias, ignorant of facts, but docile. The graduate had few strong prejudices. He knew little, but his mind remained supple, ready to receive knowledge

Beyond two or three Greek plays, the student got nothing from the ancient languages. Beyond some incoherent theories of free trade and protection, he got little from Political Economy.'

Canadian biographical literature contains only the most conventional references to the character and value of University education, and such University histories as we have seem to confine themselves to discussions of the financial difficulties of the early days, to glowing accounts of recent progress in the size of the endowment and in the number of buildings and of students, and to sympathetic interpretations of the work of an outstanding Principal or Professor. Giants there have been at times undoubtedly, but the giants are not all deadthough they may not stand out so prominently from the higher level of the mass. Golden eras there have been in the history of individual Universities and individual departments, but for Universities as a whole there is no evidence of any general or progressive deterioration. The University of to-day will

stand comparison with the University of 1910 or of 1890 or of 1860.

This conclusion is not the result of any smug complacency. All is not well with Israel. Most of us realize this only too well and criticism of the University is one of our favorite pastimes. Yet such criticism is not based on the mistaken assumption that the University is any less efficient in its appointed field than modern business or modern government or any of our current social institutions or the University of a generation ago. The standard which we use for comparison is what the University ought to be, what we would like it to be, and, tried by this standard, the modern University, like its predecessors and most of its students, would receive not much more than a bare pass. It is, however, the loftiness of the ideal which the Universities have rightly set before them which makes their actual performance look so small.

For my present purpose it is not necessary to elaborate my own criticism of the work of our Canadian Universities. It is not even possible to indicate what seem to me to be the more important of the causes of their failure to reach their ideal. Mr. Macdonnell's diagnosis finds the cause of trouble to lie in an infection of a narrow vocational spirit. As his remedy consists in the elimination of Commerce Courses from the Arts Faculty, it seems fair to infer that he believes the Commerce Courses to be largely responsible. This can scarcely be a correct interpretation. Commerce Courses in Canada are only a development of the last three or four years and in many Universities are just now being planned or organized. They cannot be blamed for a defect in University life in regard to which there has undoubtedly been real and substantial improvement during the period since their inauguration. Surely, too, the exclusion of Commerce subjects and Commerce students from the Arts Faculty is scarcely an heroic way of solving an important problem. One is reminded of a recent proposal to house theological students in a separate dormitory in order to protect them from the moral and mental temptations to which the ordinary University student is subject. The theological student who must be sheltered during his College course will scarcely make the pastor, much less the community leader, whom modern conditions demand. May we not also

say that 'the student who is pursuing purely intellectual things' is made of sterner stuff than seems to be implied in this proposal to cloister his intellectual enthusiasm? If the value of a liberal Arts training is as real and practical as is claimed, may we not expect it to stand upon its own feet? In any case no mere change in the location of classes upon the campus would have any material effect, and, even if Mr. Macdonnell would go to the extreme of doing away with Commerce Courses altogether, he would find his problem unsolved. The schools of Applied Science, of Medicine and of Law would still remain, making it difficult, as in his day, for real intellectual enthusiasm to flourish. Indeed there would be a source of infection nearer home. For let us not forget the extent to which the Liberal Arts College in Canada is itself a vocational school for teachers, just as Oxford in a very real sense has in the past been the vocational school of a select class for public life. In the past a very large proportion of our students have looked upon their Arts degree simply as the key to a teaching position in one of our High Schools or Collegiate Institutes. With them the craftsman spirit and the immediate aim have been just as pronounced as with the engineering or medical student. If this narrow vocational spirit can be destroyed only by the elimination of all vocational courses, what will be left? Personally, I believe that such a policy of drastic surgery will not be effective, at least not except at the price of the patient's life. I believe also that it is possible to find a simpler and a more effective remedy.

The proposal is based on a confusion of terms, on a confusion between what is narrowly technical and what is in the highest sense professional. This has been a problem of education in all ages and in all branches of knowledge. History, French literature, Greek roots or any other subject may be taught in a narrow technical spirit which will kill all its inspirational and cultural value, or in a broad, living and humanizing way. Our Faculties of Applied Science, as we all know, are sometimes criticized because they have tended to develop courses that were too highly specialized, courses that would make technicians or men with specialized skill, not engineers or men with the ability to apply general principles to given problems. Commerce Schools are, of course, subject to the

same danger. A study of University Courses in Commerce on this continent and in England reveals two types. In the first type we find a short two or three-year course, consisting wholly or almost wholly of highly technical, highly specialized subjects such as salesmanship, advertising, lumbering, etc., and designed to give the specialized skill necessary for a particular business or a particular 'job.' The second type of Commerce Course is as far removed from this as a liberal Arts Course is from a Medical Course. It is usually a longer course based on two to four years' work in the ordinary Arts subjects, and is designed to teach the principles which underlie business administration in general and to give the business training necessary for any business career.

The difference between the two types is in part one of method and in part one of aim or ideal. While to some extent the same ground may be covered, it is covered in an entirely different way and for an entirely different purpose. In the technical type of school, the courses are primarily descriptive; by lecture and drill the student is taught what to do in a given position, is given the detailed technique necessary for a particular business. In the other type of course, broad mental training, not specialized routine knowledge, is the object aimed at and hence the development of principles inductively from the results of observation, comparison and reflection takes the place of the dogmatic presentation of facts. It is assumed that practically all the work of a business executive can be reduced to the analysis of problems and the making of decisions. It is also assumed that in the solution of these problems business men are not simply making hit or miss guesses, but rather are following, whether consciously or not, a science based partly on precedent and custom and partly on natural, psychological and economic law. If these assumptions are correct a more or less systematic body of principles underlying business activity can be built up by induction, and the student can be given a training in the working out of business problems that will be a suitable preparation for any career in business. The student may be given problems which have actually arisen in business and be required to analyse these problems, to seek out the relevant facts and discard the irrelevant, to weigh the factors involved and to report conclusions

in writing. In this way the powers of investigation and analysis, of clear thinking and clear expression can be developed and the student's judgement and his grasp of principle can be tested. Not only that, but while the student is getting this highest type of mental training he is getting, not as an end in itself but as a by-product, a mastery of the complicated facts of business which it would take years to acquire and assimilate in any other way. He is also getting a mastery of certain of the general tools of business, such as accounting. Accounting might be considered in one sense as a technical subject, but it is an indispensable tool by which the modern business man keeps control of his business, a mastery of it can scarcely be secured in any other way than in a competent school, and if taught not as a matter of bookkeeping routine, but as the science of accounting principles, it may be used to contribute effectively to the type of intellectual training which is desired.

That this second type of course is not dominated by 'the immediate aim,' not characterized by 'hasty procedure' or 'the demand for results at once,' is further evidenced by what comes after and what precedes it. The student is actively discouraged from thinking that his Commerce degree is an immediate password to business success. The announcement of the Commerce Courses at Queen's may be taken as typical of this attitude: ‘In keeping with this policy the student will be discouraged from thinking that his college training will obviate the necessity of a probationary period in his chosen work and enable him to begin near or at the top. He will be taught to realize that he must enter the organization which employs him after graduation as a beginner, learning its practical details and its special technique, just like any other beginner, and that the chief value of his college training will come, only after the initial period of probation, in a more rapid promotion from routine work to a position of executive or administrative responsibility.' Again, the Commerce Courses at Queen's are based on two years of work in the ordinary Arts subjects. This Arts foundation is required partly in order to enable us to maintain the standard of instruction in the Commerce Courses at a high level, but more particularly in order to give the student the benefit which comes from a varied range of studies.

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