Americans -- England -- Oxford; Education -- United States; Education, Higher -- England -- Oxford; University of Oxford
The final pass examination allows a considerable range of election.
Three general subjects must be offered. At least one of these must be
chosen from the following: Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, German,
and French. If a candidate wishes, he may choose two of his three
subjects in ancient language, literature, and history, or in modern
language, literature, history, and economics. The remaining one or two
subjects may be chosen from a dozen courses ranging through the
elements of mathematics, natural science, law, and theology. This
range of choice is very different from that in America, in that a
student is not permitted freely to elect subjects without reference
to one another. For the pass degree, no considerable originality or
grasp of the subject is necessary, any more than for an
undistinguished degree in an American college; but the body of
necessary facts is pretty sure to be well ordered, if not digested.
The idea of grouping electives is the fundamental difference between
English and American education. In the case of the honor man it will
be seen to be of chief importance.
In order to take the Oxford degree, it is further necessary to be in
residence three years, and a man may reside four years before going up
for his final examination. The period of study--or loafing--may be
broken in various ways; and it is characteristic that though a man may
anticipate his time and take his last examination before the last term
of his third year, he is required to reside at the university, studies
or no studies, until the minimum residence is completed. Nothing could
indicate more clearly the importance which is attached to the merely
social side of university life.
It is, in fact, as a social being that the passman usually shines. You
may know him most often from the fact that you sight him in the High
by a waistcoat of many colors. At night he is apt to evade the
statutes as to academicals; but if he wears his gown, he wraps it
about his neck as if it were a muffler, and tilts his mortar-board at
all angles. He is the genius of the fox terrier and the bulldog pipe;
he rides to the hounds, and is apt in evading the vice-chancellor's
regulations as to tandems and four-in-hands. Or perhaps he sits
comfortably in his rooms discoursing lightly of the impious
philosophies that are the studies of the classman, and writes Horatian
verse for the "Isis" and the "Oxford Magazine." He does anything, in
fact, that is well-bred, amusing, and not too strenuous. Curiously
enough, it sometimes happens that he does sufficient reading on his
own account to give him no little real culture. Of late there has been
a reaction in favor of the pass school as affording a far better
general education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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