Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
At the outset no impartial onlooker can fail to notice that the
natural reaction against the dominance of the older learning has
tended to induce an undervaluing of the benefits which that learning
afforded and can still bestow. In this college, indeed, and in other
institutions more specially designed for instruction in science,
provision has also been made for the teaching of Latin, Greek, and the
more important modern languages and literatures. But in such
institutions these subjects usually hold only a subordinate place. It
can hardly be denied that generally throughout the country, even
although the literary side of education still maintains its
pre-eminence in our public schools and universities, it is losing
ground, and that every year it occupies less of the attention of
students of science. The range of studies which the science
examinations demand is always widening, while the academic period
within which these studies must be crowded undergoes no extension.
Those students, therefore, who, whether from necessity or choice, have
taken their college education in science, naturally experience no
little difficulty in finding time for the absolutely essential
subjects required for their degrees. Well may they declare that it is
hopeless for them to attempt to engage in anything more, and
especially in anything that will not tell directly on their places in
the final class lists. With the best will in the world, and with even,
sometimes, a bent for literary pursuits, they may believe themselves
compelled to devote their whole time and energies to the multifarious
exactions of their science curriculum.
Such a result of our latest reformation in education may be
unavoidable, but it is surely matter for regret. A training in science
and scientific methods, admirable as it is in so many ways, fails to
supply those humanizing influences which the older learning can so
well impart. For the moral stimulus that comes from an association
with all that is noblest and best in the literatures of the past, for
the culture and taste that spring from prolonged contact with the
highest models of literary expression, for the widening of our
sympathies and the vivifying of our imagination by the study of
history, the teaching of science has no equivalents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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