The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on EducationPalmer, Alice Freeman
Philosophy
The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education
Palmer, Alice Freeman
Education; Education, Higher; Women -- Education
These convictions in regard to the efficiency which the elective
principle lends to education are not confined to my critics and myself.
Let me cite testimony from representatives of other colleges. The last
Amherst Catalogue records (page 24) that "excellent results have
appeared from this [the elective] method. The special wants of the
student are thus met, his zest and progress in his work are increased,
and his association with his teachers becomes thus more close and
intimate." President Robinson says, in his annual report for 1885 to the
Corporation of Brown University: "There are advantages in a carefully
guarded system of optional studies not otherwise obtainable. The saving
of time in preparing for a special calling in life is something, and the
cumulative zeal in given lines of study, where a gratified and growing
taste is ever beckoning onward, is still more. But above all, some
provision for choice among ever-multiplying courses of study has become
a necessity." In addressing the American Institute of Instruction at Bar
Harbor, July 7, 1886, Professor A. S. Hardy, of Dartmouth, is reported
as saying: "Every educator now recognizes the fact that individual
characteristics are always sufficiently marked to demand his earliest
attention; and, furthermore, that there is a stage in the process of
education where the choice, the responsibility, and the freedom of the
individual should have a wide scope." President Adams, in his inaugural
address at Cornell in 1885, asserted that "there are varieties of gifts,
call them, if you will, fundamental differences, that make it impossible
to train successfully all of a group of boys to the same standard. These
differences are partly matters of sheer ability, and partly matters of
taste; for if a boy has so great an aversion to a given study that he
can never be brought to apply himself to it with some measure of
fondness, he is as sure not to succeed in it as he would be if he were
lacking the requisite mental capacity."
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