Self-Education in Harvard College
F late years there has been much criticism of the Amer\koYican college on the ground that undergraduates do not take their education seriously; that, with them, it is secondary to social and athletic interests-things in themselves good, but which should not overshadow the main object for which the colleges exist. This criticism has had too much foundation; and, if the desire of undergraduates for a sound education cannot be increased over what it has been, the American college, in spite of its present vogue, will not endure. Some universities have indeed proposed to give up the freshman and sophomore years, leaving them to junior colleges-in other words, to continuation secondary schools-devoting the university to such studies as professional law and medicine, and to the graduate school, which is essentially a preparation for teaching and research in an academic career. Such a proposal is, virtually, to give up the American college as part of the university. No one should object to it, least of all those of us who believe in experiments in education. For many, perhaps for most, young Americans professional training had better begin at the close of secondary instruction; but for those who expect to go far, to work in a large way, to live on a higher intellectual plane, this is not enough; nor is it in their case only a selfish ambition. For the country it is extremely important that as many of its citizens as possible be highly educated, possess the largeness of view that comes from familiarity with what men have done and thought, and what men are doing and thinking, what our complex civilization has become and how it came to pass. Much of this has no direct application to earning one's daily bread. It belongs to the region of imponderables, which, however, largely determine what a man is and what a nation will be. For want of a better name we will call it culture, or liberal education, but its very intangible quality renders it hard to explain to the young man with no specialized intellectual