The Degree of A. B.

To the Editor of the Nation: -

Sir: Apropos of your editorial remark upon Prof. Palmer's answer to his critics in regard to what he calls a "petty difficulty," I may perhaps be allowed to say, in my own and others' behalf, that it is a very poor answer to those who claim that the Bachelor's degree ought not to be disturbed in the possession of its ancient privileges. If it is a matter of small consequence, the innovators will act wisely by leaving the conservatives in possession of the old and betaking themselves to the new; the latter do not think it a matter of small importance. I am a thorough believer in the elective system, yet I do not believe that any one is entitled to the degree of A.B. whose collegiate training is not largely based on the ancient languages. All the arguments I have yet seen from those who advocate the giving of this degree to indicate simply the completion of a four year's course of study, remind me of those used by the wolf when he had determined to eat the lamb; having made up their minds to do a thing - for reasons of expediency, perhaps - they justify their action by the best arguments within the reach of a bad cause.

Most persons who use the terms "definite" and "precise," when speaking of the classical course, intend them to be understood in a general, not in a mathematical, sense. And it may surely be claimed for the "old-fashioned" degree of A. B. that it, at worst, represents a minimum of Greek and Latin, mathematics, and history. It was definite almost in the same sense that M. D. or B. D. or LL. B. are. These degrees likewise "take an individual variation of meaning for every one who wins them;" but no one will need to ask the winner of a LL. B. whether he claims to be a lawyer or a theologian.

But, granting that the A. B. of twenty years ago was indefinite, does anybody claim that the new system makes the case any better? Nobody is likely to do that. Or will some of our colleges say in substance to the father, Twenty-five years ago we made you a Bachelor of Arts for work that was somewhat indefinite, but we expect to make the case clearer to the public by giving the same degree to your son for work of an entirely different character? If the old degree is so indefinite and meaningless, it is strange that any of the reformed want it all. We should suppose that they would wish the superiority of the new education to be indicated by some appropriate degree.

Every collegiate degree given twenty-five years ago claimed to represent a certain amount of knowledge, and indicated roughly the chief sources of that knowledge. The Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Philosophy had studied little or no Greek, more rarely no Latin. In no case did the degree claim to represent even a minimum of culture. In this sense all degrees were and always will be more or less indefinite. But let us not mix up two things that are so easily kept separate, and which ought to be so kept. All experience proves that now and then a student only wastes time by trying to learn a foreign language, and that he may nevertheless attain a fair degree of scholarship in other departments. Some students who make little progress in the dead languages do fairly well with the living. The mind of one learner may be most effectively trained by means of one science, that of another, by another. And it is not asking our college authorities to do an unreasonable thing when we demand that they shall indicate as nearly as may be the sources of the training received by the graduates they send forth. It is the common error of new converts to claim more for their system than its merits justify.

[The reformers who decline to relinquish the degree of A. B., with all that it implies, to the conservatives, may contend that it has long meant nothing more than graduation from a higher institution of learning. It threw some light on the probable courses of study of the recipient, but none at all on the quality of his instruction or the height of culture and discipline attained. For all practical purposes it was necessary to affix the name of the college or "university" conferring the degree. This is still and will always be necessery, and the conservatives have a complete remedy as against Harvard by leaving to that college the naked A. B., and uniformly writing A. B. Yale, A. B. Princeton, etc., etc. No one asked that Harvard should abandon the degree of M. D. when it resolved to examine for admission to its Medical School only those who had had a liberal education. This really put a new and higher value on the degree, though, as before, it simply stood for graduation from the School. - ED. NATION.]