USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 29
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Particularly President Eliot gave all his weight to the build- ing up of a great library, open for the use of students to a degree never before known in Europe or America. Presi- dent Eliot had many wealthy friends who gave freely to these institutions which were, in effect, laboratories within their sciences. Other great universities throughout the coun- try built up similar large-scale accessories to courses in the sciences and in the arts. The result has been a broadening sense of the importance of specialties, particularly in science, which must be backed up by expensive apparatus and facili- ties. President Eliot, himself a scientific man in early life, had the profoundest belief in the possibility of using such collections in connection with undergraduate study.
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
President Eliot's interest and generalship were only a first impulse in the development of a new system of professional education throughout the United States. It was a period of fruitful educational ideas all over the land, especially in the State universities, which everywhere in the West took the leadership exercised in Massachusetts by the group of private universities and colleges. They had their own problems and their own systems. Some of their ideas-especially the higher education of women-were reflected back to Massachusetts.
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They were also ready to put into effect the new Harvard methods.
The Harvard Law School, under the immediate guidance of Dean Langdell, perfected its own methods into the elabor- ate case system. It then trained up young men as organizers and as teachers, who had a share in the development of similar law schools all over the country. The Divinity School could not be galvanized into a large body of students, but included teachers of great eminence in languages and the archæology of the Biblical nations. Wealthy and powerful friends furnished Harvard with the means to erect academic buildings which are almost British Museums in size and in the extent of their libraries. Such adjuncts to higher educa- tion were provided all over the land.
President Eliot was from the first especially interested in the Medical School, where for several years he had a running fight with professors who did not see the need of all that clinical instruction and opportunity. Out of the Faculty of Medicine emerged a separate Dental School. Late in life, at the instance of the Medical Faculty, President Eliot was made an honorary M.D. of Harvard University, in recognition of his services. Special schools were established under President Eliot in Architecture, in Public Health, in Education and in Applied Biology.
The Lawrence Scientific School was never successful under that name. President Eliot for a time transformed it into a sort of division of Harvard College, in which students could steer for an S.B. degree instead of an A.B. That was one of the few failures in President Eliot's plans. Though a scientific man by training, he could not admit that technical schools require a very different type of training, in which elec- tives come not at the beginning but late in the course. Presi- dent Eliot, who had once been a professor in the Institute of Technology, favored a combination between Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which would prevent duplication and combine resources into the most important school of the kind in the country. The alumni of M. I. T. were hostile to the plan, and it encountered legal obstacles which brought about its abandonment.
One of the most important educational advances made
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under the direction of Charles William Eliot was the Gradu- ate School of Arts and Sciences, now paralleled by advanced schools in other colleges of Massachusetts. The impetus for this institution, which now numbers about a thousand students, came from other sources, but it was cordially taken up by President Eliot. It began with a group of so-called graduate courses, given on about the same footing as the undergraduate courses, and by the same instructors. Gradually it was developed into a separate school, with a dean of its own. The greater number of the students are preparing for college and university teaching. From the first, undergraduates were admitted to courses for which they were qualified. Under these auspices, which are the common property of all large universities, the students who are working for a Ph.D. degree are numerous. In this respect the graduate schools of the great American universities are now the nearest American approach to the great German universities. They are superior to most foreign universities in laboratories, museums and libraries, in the number of available courses, and in opportuni- ties for research for large numbers of students.
SEMINARY COURSES
Another of the contributions of President Eliot and the men who worked with him to the educational system of Mas- sachusetts and of the whole country was his insistence on individual investigation and the preparation of theses as in- dispensable for advanced education and as a desirable method for qualified college students. He must have observed that method in Germany, where it had become a highly valued part of the system of higher education. He thus describes it in one of his books: "The highest instruction given in the American universities is given in those intimate meetings of small groups of advanced students with their teachers, which are variously called seminaries, conferences, or research courses. .
"The members of any seminary may follow special lines of inquiry, pursue their own work, and confer individually at stated times with the instructors under whose guidance they are conducting their researches; but the seminary or confer-
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WOMEN'S EDUCATION
ence also gives opportunity to the instructor to present results of his own work to the advanced students in his subject."
"All this written work gives the student who does it tho- roughly, excellent practice in accumulating and sorting ma- terials for discussion, summarizing arguments, and describing clearly complicated proceedings; and inasmuch as facility in such work is often highly useful to its possessor in after-life, much is to be said in defense or advocacy of the thesis. On the other hand, the thesis often raises grave questions in the minds of both student and instructor as to the degree of in- dependent labor which it represents, or rather as to the amount of copied and quoted matter which it may properly contain."
INTERUNIVERSITY RELATIONS
This method was hardly known for college students until applied in history by Henry Adams, who, early in President Eliot's administration, was brought in to teach American his- tory. One of his seminary students was Henry Cabot Lodge, later a Senator from Massachusetts. Eliot had a natural con- viction that, in every subject of study, contact with sources is essential for the teacher and has a very enlivening effect upon students of every degree of advancement.
In one of his addresses he complained that his university had no funds which could be used to aid teachers in service to enlarge their field by study in foreign or other American universities ; and particularly to work out some inquiry within their field, for which special research was necessary. That difficulty was in part met by the sabbatical leave of absence, which frequently was used for such special research; and after his retirement a large fund was established at Harvard to make possible such special studies. He was much interested in the system of exchange with foreign universities, which has spread far beyond the bounds of Harvard University; and in an annual exchange of teachers with a group of six western endowed colleges, which has proved useful both to Harvard and to these allies.
WOMEN'S EDUCATION
In another chapter in this volume is described the develop- ment of the higher education for women in Massachusetts,
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in which, although Harvard has never admitted women to any of its undergraduate courses, academic or scientific, President Eliot's influence has been a great aid to the develop- ment of the higher education of women. In 1882 Professor Goodwin of Harvard and a group of Cambridge ladies, who were part of the university circle, received a woman student, later professor of Greek of Vassar College, as a student of her specialty. Other women asked for like privileges in their subjects. The result was the organization of Radcliffe Col- lege, which is elsewhere described in this volume.
President Eliot undoubtedly expected that the result would be a woman's college on the same plan as Barnard College, which is one of the constituent parts of Columbia University. Apparently he was willing that it should become an acknowl- edged part of Harvard. Other influences were strong against that degree of coeducation. A settlement was finally reached by which Radcliffe College was separately incorporated with its own funds and its own Board of Trustees and its own plan; but all the instruction was to be given by teachers offer- ing courses at Harvard College, with the same methods of instruction as in their Harvard classes.
On those conditions, the Corporation agreed to certify that the Radcliffe degrees were "equivalent" to the similar degrees conferred by Harvard University. Young women were to be admitted to college courses open to graduate students, in the same classrooms as the men; and to have equal privileges in the libraries and laboratories for advanced work. The immediate personal relatives and friends of the Eliot family were very active in pushing the new enterprise.
Just about the time when President Eliot appeared on the Harvard horizon, the University of Michigan-and later Cornell University-admitted women to their undergrad- tate and graduate instruction, an example which has been followed by practically all the State universities, and by many endowed colleges. In Massachusetts, the Harvard-Radcliffe method of coordinate colleges has been followed by Tufts College and some others. The largest and strongest collegiate institutions for women, however, are separate. Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Boston University and Wheaton are elsewhere described in this series. The marriage of Alice
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INFLUENCE OF HARVARD
Freeman, a former president of Wellesley College, to Pro- fessor Palmer of Harvard, next neighbor to President Eliot, was the nearest approach to a reception of women into Har- vard College. A woman professor has, since President Eliot's retirement, been appointed to the Harvard Medical School; which, however, admits no women to its classes.
INFLUENCE OF HARVARD ON SECONDARY EDUCATION
That a gifted son of Harvard, conspicuous for his abilities as an educator, an administrator and a reformer, should have undertaken and accomplished the task of reorganizing what might be called his hereditary institution, might be considered all in his day's work. At the beginning he was dealing chiefly with his own people. He does not appear to have fore- seen the great numbers of Harvard students who would come from other sections of the country than New England. That, in the midst of these struggles and triumphs, he should turn his attention to the problems of the high schools, the second- ary schools, the common schools and the kindergartens of the country, was an evidence of his broad patriotic spirit.
The secondary schools were in a sense a part of his job, inasmuch as they prepared or thought they were preparing boys for Harvard College. The elective system rested upon the presumption that freshmen came to college well grounded in the ordinary secondary studies. President Eliot realized that one of the greatest difficulties in the elective system was that boys came to it unprepared by hard and well-directed study, except in the classics and mathematics, plus a little modern languages. He very soon realized that such prepara- tion did not prepare them for the freedom of the elective system. Therefore he made it his business to call attention to the defects of the secondary schools. The masters and teachers and trustees of those schools at first protested; but could not resist his powerful attacks. He therefore took them into his confidence, recognizing them as an essential part of the educational system of Massachusetts and of the whole country. Associations of the teachers in the various second- ary subjects were formed. A New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools was formed.
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THE COMMITTEE OF TEN (1892)
President Eliot came into contact with the National Educa- tional Association, organized chiefly by western men; and in 1892 that association, at his instance, formed a "Committee of Ten" to go into the question of the methods of teaching the subjects required for applicants to enter college anywhere. That committee proposed to the National Council of Educa- tion to call a series of conferences ; and the National Council appointed a committee, of which Charles W. Eliot was chair- man, with authority to provide for subcommittees. The Com- mittee of Ten met November 9-11, 1892; and under the leadership of President Eliot authorized conferences in sec- ondary subjects, and prepared a list of questions as a guide for the discussions. Eliot raised the funds necessary to make possible the meetings of nine subcommittees, of ten individ- uals each, to meet and to frame a plan for improvement in the ten fields-Latin; Greek; English ; other Modern Lanuguages ; Mathematics; Physics; Astronomy and Chemistry; Natural History; History, Government and Political Economy; and Geography.
The reports of those conferences, which included eighty- eight persons, part of them college and part of them secondary teachers, were widely circulated and had a great influence in enlarging the curriculum and improving the methods of sec- ondary schools throughout the country. In many fields, these original reports were supplemented by later conferences and commissions.
The starting point of this transaction, which aroused school- teachers, school boards, and college faculties throughout the country, was the fruitful mind of Charles W. Eliot, combined with his extraordinary ability to think out methods of bringing people to act in harmony, and his national influence as a great educational force.
EFFECT ON SECONDARY EDUCATION
Of the nine reports, eight appear to have been written by Harvard graduates or teachers who had been aroused by President Eliot's educational ideas and had been selected as among the leaders in their fields. The reports were followed
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INTEREST IN LOWER SCHOOLS
by a series of deeper investigations made in various parts of the country by committees of the classical, mathematical, his- torical, scientific, and other subjects taught in the schools. The agitation led to a better understanding all over the land between the colleges and the schools; to a better correlation of subjects; to an improvement in methods and textbooks; and particularly to a sense of unity of purpose in all stages of education.
To establish a relation between Harvard University and all the other universities on one side and the secondary schools on the other side was possible because the two systems were working on the same young people, and with a common pur- pose. President Eliot divined that both colleges and second- ary schools were suffering because of defects in the lower schools. His point of view was well set forth in his book on Educational Reform, published in 1901.
"We need more school-time in the year; that to get this safely we must have better ventilation, more gymnastics, and more interesting instruction; that the actual amount of work accomplished should be carefully considered on a large scale- not in a single school, as I have done, but in many schools, by many teachers and many superintendents, to see if the pres- ent low limits of actual attainment cannot be enlarged; that the selection of subjects requires reconsideration; and, lastly, that the grading of pupils should be by proficiency."
INTEREST IN LOWER SCHOOLS
Throughout his life Eliot found opportunity to urge the improvement of the younger school children: first, because some of them were starting on the road to higher education and ought not to waste their time; but still more because most of them would never get to college, and comparatively few of them to a high school. Hence the elementary schools were the great opportunity of aiding the community by im- proving the quality of its population. He was always asking for more money for the public schools; for better salaries and conditions for teachers; for professional education as a req- uisite for teachers.
In 1891 he prepared a plan for "shortening and enriching the grammar school course." He strongly protested against
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the trivial literature used in the lower schools. He pointed out that all the books required to be read in an ordinary high- school course in two years could be read aloud in forty-six hours, and that a high-school graduate in fifteen hours did all the examples in the arithmetic used by children during two years. He never ceased to protest against this waste of the springtime of young minds.
ELIOT AS A DEMOCRAT.
Outside as well as inside his educational influence, within and without the precincts of Harvard University, Eliot was a large state and national figure, a great American citizen. He was never a candidate for an elective office,-perhaps as a "highbrow" he could not have been elected. He was a Mug- wump in the Mugwump period. He was known sometimes to vote the Democratic ticket in later years. At one time he made a public speech against the protective tariff system of the period.
A democrat in the stricter sense of the word he always was, though of aristocratic descent, brought up among wealthy people, a part of the bluest circle in Blue Boston. To the end of his days he was a believer in the brotherhood of man and in the capacity of the average man to have a part in his own government. In a letter on this general subject he says :
"Doubtless Harvard University contains a larger propor- tion of children of well-to-do parents than the western uni- versities contain; but this does not seem to me to be a disadvantage to Harvard. After all is said about democracy, it remains true that acquiring some property is an evidence of some sort of merit in the parents-that is, of intelligence, or honesty, or health, above the average, or sometimes all three. Free institutions have no tendency, so far as I see, to obliterate distinctions founded on such merits ; and all institu- tions of education contribute to the transmission of such merits."
He was very much affected by the reports concerning the physical and mental status of the young men taken into the American Army in 1917-1918. Therefore he demanded that "the medical examiner, the school nurse, and the district nurse, every school system in the country, rural as well as urban,
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A LITERARY MAN
and their work should go on incessantly, not for a few days out of the year, but all through the year. The first duty of these permanent officials should be following up the children to their homes and instructing their parents as to remedial action. Since it will not be possible to obtain permanent im- provement in society as a whole in respect to the bodily de- fects of children and adolescents until the whole community has been enlightened in regard to nutrition, housing, com- munity cleanliness, and the medical means of controlling epidemics and resisting the spread of venereal diseases, this medical instruction, to be given through physicians and nurses employed at public expense, is the most legitimate kind of public instruction in a democracy become heterogeneous."
In a letter on the conditions of Harvard College he wrote : "You said at the start of this discussion about raising the College fee that you wanted the College open to young men who had either money or brains. The gist of our difference lies, I think, in this restricted alternative. I want to have the College open equally to men with much money, little money, or no money, provided they all have brains. I care no more than you for young men who have no capacity for an intellectual life. They are not fit subjects for a college, whether their parents have money or not. ... I care for the young men whose families have so little money that it would make a real difference to them whether the Harvard tuition fee were $150 or $225. ... To my thinking, they constitute the very best part of Harvard College."
ELIOT AS A LITERARY MAN
Charles William Eliot was almost as distinguished in his literary writings as in his administrative service. First in the list of the Eliot works is the collection of fifty Reports of the President to the University. These are admirable as a clear and thorough review of the transactions of the preced- ing academic year. They are also full of the same philosophy, of work, of continuous work, of well-organized work, of pro- ductive work, that appears in his public addresses. The series might almost be called a condensed history of half a century of Harvard; it contains also most of his philosophy of educa- tion and much of his philosophy of life.
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The bibliography at the end of this chapter lists all of the works of Charles William Eliot that were published in bound volumes. Of those, several are collections of periodical articles or addresses : for instance, Contributions to Civilization; Civil Service Reform and Popular Government; Religion of the Future; Individualism and Collectivism; and Educational Re- form. Early in his professional life he published, with his co-professor Storer, A Manual of Qualitative Chemical Anal- ysis, which appears to be his only permanent contribution to his branch of experimental science. The one extended work which came from his brain and pen was his Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, a tribute by a sorrowing father to his son. The two volumes contain some personal remembrances, and much of his philosophy of the happy life.
He lived and was active fourteen years after his retirement from the presidency, but unfortunately did not put on record his reminiscence and life experience,-which might have been a noble contribution to American literature and of the world's knowledge of a great spirit.
Hence the literary reputation of Charles William Eliot is based in the public mind mostly on his editorship of the Five-Foot Shelf of Books. This idea seems to have come from a New York publisher who diagnosed the opportunity for an authoritative selection from the world's literature. Of that set, millions of volumes have been taken up by the public, and he is more widely known in the United States of America as the editor of that series than as the apostle of a national system of education that would develop the powers of the American people.
ELIOT THE SEER
At seventy-five years of age, Eliot preferred to withdraw from the great responsibilities of the presidency of Harvard; but he still made addresses, and from time to time wrote or spoke on public affairs. The World War in 1914 hit him hard. He looked upon it as a struggle between "men of violence and perverse ambition." One of his greatest utter- ances is an article in a magazine on the basis of the continu-
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NINETIETH BIRTHDAY
ance of the republic, which he found to be: "the principle of. toleration in religion-universal education, the steady culti- vation in all classes of correct conservation, just reasoning and the taste for good reading, a better family life, opportuni- ties for the enjoyment of fresh air and natural beauty," and the "extreme publicity with which all American activities are carried on."
CLIMAX OF THE NINETIETH BIRTHDAY (1924)
To few great men is it given to witness the outcome of their own life work. The thread of some is broken off in the middle; some finish their work early and outlive their touch with mankind. To Eliot came the surpassing experi- ence of continuing to be a national figure almost to the end of his ninety-three years. The highest moment in the life of the man to whom had come great successes and great honors was the celebration of his ninetieth birthday at Harvard Col- lege, March 20, 1924.
A throng of graduates and distinguished guests crowded Sanders Theatre (the inadequate public hall of the Univer- sity) ; messages came from the students. In all nearly 250 messages of congratulation were received from the faculties and students of Harvard, from the Harvard Clubs through- out the world, from sister colleges and universities, from learned societies, and from the Senate and House of Rep- resentatives of the Commonwealth. Half a score spoken addresses were levelled at the venerable figure who occupied the seat of honor, including the words of Governor Cox and Chief Justice Taft.
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