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
In regard to the first, the limitation of attention, I understand that,
after all, our specialty cannot fill our entire life. We do sometimes
sit down to dinner; we occasionally talk with a friend; we now and then
take a journey; we permit ourselves from time to time to read some other
book than one which refers to our subject. That is, I take it, if we are
fully alive to the great danger that in specializing we are cutting off
a large part of the universe, we shall be wise in gathering eagerly
whatever additional knowledge we may acquire outside our specialty. And
I must say that the larger number of eminent specialists whom I have
happened to know have been men pretty rich in knowledge outside their
specialties. They were men who well apprehended the extreme danger of
their limited modes of pursuit and who greedily grasped, therefore, at
every bit of knowledge they could obtain which lay beyond their
province. They appropriated all the wisdom they could; and merely
because it did not exactly fit in with their specialty, they did not
turn it away. I do not know how far it is wise to go in this effort to
repair the one-sidedness in which most of us are compelled to live. A
rather extreme case was once brought to my attention. There was a
student at Harvard who had been a high scholar with me, and I found that
he was also so specializing in the classics that when he graduated he
took classical honors. Some years later I learned that he was one of the
highest scholars in the Medical School. Meeting him a few years after
he had entered his profession, I asked, "How did it happen that you
changed your mind so markedly? You devoted yourself to classics and
philosophy in college. What made you finally decide to become a
physician?" "Finally decide!" said he. "Why, from childhood up I never
intended to be anything else." "But," I persisted, "I cannot be mistaken
in recalling that you devoted yourself in college to classics and
philosophy." "Yes," he said, "I did, because I knew I should never have
another chance at those subjects. I was going to give the rest of my
life to medicine, so I took those years for classics and philosophy." I
asked, "Wasn't that a great mistake; haven't you now found out your
blunder?" "Oh, no," said he, "I am a much better physician on that
account; I could not have done half so well if I hadn't had all that
training in philosophy and classics." Now I cannot advise such a course
for everybody. It takes a big man to do that. If you are big enough, it
is worth while laying a very broad foundation; but considering the size
on which most of us are planned, it is wiser to begin early and
specialize from the very start.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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