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
Such, then, are a few examples of the ways in which choice may be
limited so as to become strong. They are but examples, intended merely
to draw attention to the three kinds of limitation still possible.
Humble ways they may seem, not particularly interesting to hear about;
business methods one might call them. But by means of these and such
as these the young scholar becomes clearer in intention, larger in
information, hardier in persistence. In urging such means I shall be
seen to be no thick and thin advocate of election. That I have never
been. Originally a doubter, I have come to regard the elective
system, that is, election under such limitations as I have described, as
the safest--indeed as the only possible--course which education can
now take, I advocate it heartily as a system which need not carry us
too fast or too far in any one direction, as a system so inherently
flexible that its own great virtues readily unite with those of an alien
type. Under its sheltering charge the worthier advantages of both
grouped and prescribed systems are attainable. I proclaim it,
therefore, not as a popular cry nor as an educational panacea, but as
a sober opportunity for moral and intellectual training. Limited as
it is at Harvard, I see that it works admirably with the studious,
stimulatingly with those of weaker will, not unendurably with the
depraved. These are great results. They cannot be set aside by calling
them the outcome of "individualism." In a certain sense they are. But
"individualism" is an uncertain term. In every one of us there is a
contemptible individuality, grounded in what is ephemeral and
capriciously personal. Systematic election, as I have shown, puts
limitations on this. But there is a noble individuality which should
be the object of our fostering care. Nothing that lends it strength
and fineness can be counted trivial. To form a true individuality
is, indeed, the ideal of the elective system. Let me briefly sketch my
conception of that ideal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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