The Junior College

I

IN the last ten years a notable movement has appeared in secondary education. Our academies, seminaries, and even our high schools have been offering their graduates an additional two years of study of college grade, enabling them to enter college as juniors instead of as freshmen. This advance work, known as the Junior College course, is optional and does not interfere with the regular curriculum, which continues what it has always been, the regular students possibly somewhat stimulated by association with those of superior rank. The movement began tentatively and advanced for a time slowly, but lately has become a torrent. The latest official figures I have seen give 375 Junior Colleges already established and an average increase of something like five a month. I do not guarantee these figures. They look large, startling even. I have no means of verifying them. Though called official, I think we must treat them as only approximate.

Nothing is more striking in this movement than its escape from criticism. I at least have heard no word of doubt. Such silence alarms me. I want to hear discussion. I am like the mother who, when little Johnnie is quiet, knows that some mischief is at hand. We need controversy. But wherever teachers gather they assume the Junior College to be a long step onward and mourn that their funds are not large enough to allow them to adopt it. This temper does them credit. They are intellectually ambitious. Their regular work has been largely one of routine, where year after year they have gone over the same elementary ground. Here something more thoughtprovoking appears. Then too a teacher looks sadly on a pupil who has begun to taste the joys of an intellectual life and now, with books abruptly closed, is drawn off by a parent to the ballroom or business. Even though no decision for a full college course could at that time be reached, might not decision be postponed and a year or two more be allowed at school? Perhaps entrance to college might then become possible.

Colleges too are in general not unfavorable to the movement. Their professors are annoyed by the amount of elementary work which must now be done by freshmen and sophomores before they are fit for the research and independent thought for which the final years are planned. In Germany that preliminary work is done in a Gymnasium. If we too could relegate all this preparation to a Junior College at a distance from the campus, our intellectual atmosphere would be improved.

Naturally enough, then, those who are considering the immediate effects of the Junior College — what we may call the movement in its short run — regard it as a notable advance in American education. In the many reports of teachers’ meetings which I have read I have not met an adverse word. On all other accounts than the heavy new financial burdens, it is assumed as a matter of course to be a blessing. In this paper I want to question this assumption and invite attention to the effects of it in the long run. In my judgment it is more likely to bring disaster than anything which has happened in our world of education during the last fifty years. I call on the public to see whether there is still time to lessen this damage and I acknowledge my own fault in not having protested before. Perhaps some excuse may be found for a very old man already burdened with other heavy cares.

II

Let me point out first a few of the lesser evils. While, in any academy, — Bradford, for example, — the girl who was not going to college might in this way get a taste of what college would be, it would be a very small taste and at the cost of the girl who might have tasted the real thing. No one will pretend that the instruction had in a secondary school will generally be as valuable as that given by college professors. And certainly there is a great difference in the surroundings. At Bradford the great majority of the associates of a Junior College girl must be her inferiors, mere schoolgirls. More than three fourths of those she meets at college will be her superiors. Can there be any question which is the more maturing atmosphere? Or again, however irksome a professor finds it to be spending time over half-prepared freshmen, there are advantages in it if he is looking toward fashioning intellectual character. That is difficult business at best. Even after four years many young men graduate without bearing any distinct mark of their college life. Could that life, then, be safely cut in two? I doubt it.

It is agreed, however, that as soon as Junior Colleges become usual, universities will drop their freshman and sophomore years. This has already occurred at Johns Hopkins and Stanford. Other universities are preparing for it. But they are not likely to stop there. They will feel the need of the longer disciplinary time of which I have just spoken and will substitute for the dropped years two advanced or graduate years. Certainly this looks like a clear gain in our education, putting us on a genuine level with education abroad. But it is precisely on that fact that I base my strongest objection. Almost certainly the Junior College will in the long run blot out what I regard as the precious distinction of the American university in contrast to the European. But to demonstrate this as a fact and show why it would be a calamity is a long affair and will require the entire remainder of this paper.

Hitherto, in America, rather more than half of our college graduates have gone into business. A small group, chiefly in art and literature, gives itself up to the private pursuit of these tastes. The rest enter some one or other of the professional schools. But no sharp line is drawn separating men of affairs from scholars. In every city between the two oceans are men and women who, though not members of any profession, have in passing through some college acquired an interest in scholarly things, and use their times of leisure for carrying this interest on. They are known as cultivated persons, caring for much besides money-making. Centres of civilization we may call them, to whom their communities look for leadership in all idealistic matters. They become trustees of libraries, museums, galleries, schools. They plan and support organizations for the protection of the poor and feeble-minded. They watch over the beauty of their town, guarding its trees and parks from neglect and encroachment. They are honored with the hate of the local politicians, and when that corrupt tribe becomes intolerable these dreamers organize and secure a brief decency. All my readers will recognize this public-minded class and will feel that its influence, while auxiliary to what is best among the lawyers, doctors, teachers, and ministers, differs from that and is perhaps more pervasive. They are our true aristocrats, keeping our precious democracy wholesome.

Now if the Junior College system should ever become complete, our colleges would turn into professional schools and this important class of amateur scholars would disappear. America is the only country which has ventured to interpose four years of culture study between its day schools and its professional training. For the essential topic to which the college is given is the student himself. In James Russell Lowell’s fine phrase, it aims at teaching nothing useful, and so by its presence in a society disposed to measure everything by material standards it becomes a factor of extremest use. The student in these formative years directly faces his mind and examines its working in many fields. Here he is transformed from boy to man. His countenance, figure, speech, and bearing undergo a maturing process before he is subjected to professional discipline.

There is nothing like this in any other country, and nowhere is the double tutelage so much needed. Elsewhere one or the other is sacrificed, the professional school or the cultural school. England can hardly be said to have professional schools. The study of divinity in the Established Church is more elementary than with us, than with the Dissenters, or with the Catholics. The intending lawyer reads his Blackstone or Maitland in the office of someone already in practice. The medical student enters a hospital and picks up what he can from books, dissections, and the unsystematic supervision of the doctors in charge. That there are advantages in leaving the student so largely to himself must be acknowledged. But I think most Americans will consider them outweighed by our dual system of guidance.

The universities of the Continent, on the other hand, are entirely professional. There is no pretense of culture training. Some years ago I asked the professor of education at the Sorbonne how many men were then there for purposes of culture. He answered, ’Not one.’ I put the same question to Professor Villari in Florence. He said he thought he had seen two. He was not sure. They might have been studying art for professional purposes. The French, German, or Italian university is a mere group of professional schools, yet so centralized in government supervision that at one time a French Minister of Education could boast that at any given hour he knew just what lecture was being given in every university of France.

III

It is plain, then, why the Junior College, when fully established, must exterminate our scholarly amateur. No doubt he could pick up much cultural matter in a law school or scientific school. So he could now, but he does not go there. His ideal interests are not often aroused till the last years of his college course. A professional school, too, while serving his purpose only incidentally, will oblige him to postpone for six years his entering business life. He will do nothing of the kind. He will go directly from school to business, and the glorious peculiarity of American education will disappear.

And with its disappearance will go, not only the quiet spread of civilization over the dark places of our land, but also the principal means of support of the colleges themselves. Those four years in a cultural college are generally the radiant period in the life of whoever passes through them. Youthful pulses are astir; all possibilities open before us; nowhere else have we met so many worth-while friends; talk with them awakens our thought, our aspirations; he is an unusual person who does not come upon some study that stirs him and discloses something of the joy of knowledge; then the sports, the concerts, clubs, with the hundred interests he never dreamed of before; and above all the sense of being merged in an historic university in whose behalf each member counts his own life cheap — all these things melt together into memory with a glow such as nothing else can equal. The graduate looks back to this as the halcyon period of his life. He returns to the sacred spot as often as possible and, as soon as he acquires wealth, gratefully joins the company of preceding donors. By such loving devotion many of our colleges were founded and all are now maintained. What shall we do when, through the working out of Junior College schemes, it ceases?

Presumably we shall do what European universities have done — rely on the State. Gifts to higher education from individuals are hardly known on the Continent. The comparatively small number of universities there are state institutions; new ones are seldom founded. Their professors hold by government appointment, and the subjects taught must have the sanction of the Minister of Education. Are these educational conditions what we want? Shall we count them an advance on what we have at present? Is it wise to drift into them without criticism, following a popular cry?

It may be said that we already have state universities and they do us no harm. In my judgment they do us much good. But they do not stand alone. A state that supports one of them has ordinarily at least half a dozen others of diverse types in its neighborhood. Feeling the influence of these, the state university draws into its curriculum as many cultural subjects as the legislature is willing to pay for. This in several states is as many as any cultural college offers. Accordingly our state university is never a mere group of advanced professional schools. A large part of its work is of the most ‘useful’ sort. The common people who vote money for its support properly expect that their sons and daughters shall be taught the ' practical ’ matters which would be required in making an average living. No other college does this work so well. As most of these universities are in states predominantly agricultural, the rudest details of farming appear on their programmes side by side with literature, philosophy, and history. This is as it should be. I merely adduce it to show that there is no analogy between our state university and the state university of Europe. When our Junior Colleges attain their goal it will be nothing of this widely beneficial sort. It will remove learning from the common people. It will not bring it to their doors. A European university can keep up the number of its students by prescribing a degree as a condition for political appointment.

I hope the purpose and limitations of this paper will be clearly seen. One must not turn to it for instruction on conditions of study in Europe. I have not been there since the war. The enjoyment and profit of my sixteen previous visits were so great that I have not been willing to go back and look on desolation. About as great changes must have come in the intellectual scenery as in the physical. What I have stated, therefore, as facts cannot be minutely trusted. All that I would insist upon is that between the higher education of Europe and of America there is a substantial and important difference which the Junior Colleges, if unchecked, will break down. I write merely to start inquiry. The more fully I am proved in error, the more pleased I shall be. I cannot myself detect that error. The steps through which my argument has passed are tolerably simple and the conclusion is for me inevitable. Wherever Junior Colleges are strong, colleges will drop their first two years and will add two graduate years, chiefly of professional study. The unique intermediate culture college of America will disappear, and with it the great troop of men and women who, having had contact with scholarship, have become leaders in idealism and centres of civilization for our waste places. The financial backing of these persons, the main support of our colleges hitherto, now ceasing, we must, like the universities of Europe, come into dependence on the State and let our politicians refuse money if we teach such science as they do not like. I do not detect the flaw in this argument. Will someone point it out?

My only desire is to awaken thought. This paper is an impassioned cry to superintendents to mind what they are doing, to regard ultimate consequences rather than attractive immediate issues. Whoever will show that I am unduly alarmed and that it is wise to break down the distinction between American and European education will earn my gratitude. I don’t want to think as I do, but I can’t help it.