THE NEED OF AMERICAN COLLEGES.

The New York Tribune addresses a few remarks to "Parents and Guardians," in which it moralizes on the various weaknesses of our American colleges and comes to the conclusion that we need better primary schools - a conclusion with which we all agree, although not always acknowledging that better schools should mean no higher universities. Says the Tribune:

"In the college commencements which filled up last week one or two subjects were brought prominently forward of importance not only to the young people and their families, but to the country at large; for we must remember that the condition of the country twenty years hence will largely depend upon this very education which we are now giving to these boys and girls.

One of these suggestive points of interest was offered by the complaint of the family of Johns Hopkins that the great university endowed by their relative is not doing the work which he intended - of educating the masses of poor young men. 'The education,' they say, 'given is the highest - it is too high. It seems to educate further already well-educated post-graduates of other colleges. With forty-one professors and an income of $225,000 we should be educating a thousand young men instead of two hundred.' Precisely the same complaint might be made of one or two other important institutions richly endowed by large bequests for the express purpose of educating young men of limited means. The course of study necessary to obtain a diploma in some of these is so difficult as to be simply impossible to a boy of ordinary intellect; hence, out of freshman classes of seventy, four or five boys worry through, often with broken health and exhausted energy. Now, if the object of the men who endowed these colleges was to send out yearly a few highly educated scholars, this system is the proper one; but if it was to afford a chance to the mass of young men for development and usefulness, this system completely thwarts and makes it null.

The earnest protest of the Vassar graduates against the plan pursued in that college bears upon a singular part of our modern educational training. The protest was moderate and strong in both meaning and language, and deserves careful attention from every parent. The author (who had herself won the first place in the graduating class and was therefore entitled to speak) urged that the system of placing "honors" at graduation before the pupil at her entrance into school as the chief object of her endeavors "induced a nervous strain incompatible with her highest physical or mental development. The system was not a correct index to either ability or industry; it led to superficial work, done mainly with a view to gain high marks, and the motives for study induced by it are unworthy ones." It is not Vassar College alone to which this protest is applicable; it might be urged in almost every public and private school in the country. There is hardly a thoughtful parent who does not know that the object set before his boy and girl at school is, not the gradual healthy development of their mental power and ability for usefulness, but a certain number of marks, a high place in their class, some paltry distinction on graduating day. Pupils thus fail to perceive how utterly factitious and worthless these successes are a week after they will leave the school. The argument of the teacher is that the examination marks are a test of the pupil's proficiency. This is seldom correct. They are a test of his verbal memory and physical endurance. So wide is the range of study required now even in primary schools that nothing more can be done by the pupil than to commit the text-books to memory; to learn as it were the alphabet, the dictionary, of each science, in the vain hope that in after life he may learn to comprehend it, to speak the language. Without entering upon the vexed question of the higher education for women, we may illustrate our meaning by the schedule of studies offered the other day to women in Columbia College. The range of study in each branch consisted of bald text-books, compendiums, grammars. What thoughtful woman, for example, in a good library with one year's quiet reading, would not absorb an infinitely wider and truer knowledge of either history, language or literature than was included in this school curriculum for four years? It is the letter that kills in our whole present school system; the spirit is needed to make alive.

It is easy to understand how the mistake has been made. Naturally each college has an ambition to raise its standard. Each professor for his own reputation's sake seeks to 'bring up' his branch of study. Whether the boy has physical strength or mental capacity to bear the strain put upon him is not considered. If not, let him go. The standard of work required is set by the capacity of the abnormally gifted or toughest student. Now the fact is that the mass of pupils in any school are not particularly clever nor physically strong. But they, too, have their place to fill in the world; and if they work faithfully at school to fit themselves to fill it, it is unjust and cruel to turn them out into it at the beginning of their career with a sense of defeat because Nature did not endow them as highly as a few of their brethren. The Tribune has called the attention of colleges and teachers to this increasing and fatal error. It only echoes the opinion of parents everywhere. They see, if teachers do not, that the real object of education in American colleges should be not to elevate the reputation of this or that college or faculty, nor to train a few exceptional intellects among pupils, nor even for a time to foster high scholarship, but to develop the capabilities of every grade of students, to encourage, not stamp upon, the dull, stimulate the idle, fit even the most stupid for the humble place that he will hold. The faculty and college that soonest recognize this fact and act upon it will not only command the gratitude of parents but will do the best and most effective work for the country. It is not cloisters or shades of lettered ease like Oxford and Cambridge that the masses of the United States want for the next fifty years so much as schools like Rugby."