^^ / X< /^ / -iJ- /^ / / v/ ; / ^ / ,^^ x*- / // / ^ / Lb no? €mntl\ W^mvmxi^ ^ilrat^g THE GIFT OF ^J2^..q..fdh.%.U ,i»..\y>c].i 7TO-1 Date Due DEC ) 1953 HS «**^ --gsg^ »y- J_^ n^^^ IfSffp- ^?.VS121 ri?- ^ ■""r^ . -: " •' M ' r i?/^(;' y^ JA!^ 1. 8 isefit / /^ / titvx 1 r> ' UbT-1 b 968 Mp iwor\ -^ a /w 'If cr 1980 F ersW yotafV . .. .iiim v.... iiuiWiWlnlMMi Sta tB^^®'' ■' currW-'^- Ihe co«S| A92* 032 602 45^^ ott" The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924032602454 THE COLLEaE CUERICULUM IN THE UNITED STATES THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM UNITED STATES CompfimcnfH of t^e (^uf^ot 218 Walnat Street MONTCLAIR. N. J. Registrar, Teachers College, Columbia University PUBLISHED BY XTeacbers College, Columbia IHniversitB NEW YORK 1907 THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM UNITED STATES BY LOUIS FRANKLIN SNOW, Ph.D. FORMERLY Dean, Women's College, Brown University AND Registrar, Teachers College, Columbia University PTIBUSHBD BY tteacbers Collcee, Columbta TUniversits NEW YORK 1907 ) I .1 1', 11 {1,^1 • Yli/slMM A a ) 74-xl PREFACE In making public the results of this study of the develop- ment of the college curriculum I wish to acknowledge the extreme courtesy of the authorities of Harvard, Yale, Prince- ton, University o-f Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown in facilitating the research. Tlie cordiality with which the treas- ured manuscript records were opened toi my inspection and the friendly suggestions and appreciative interest in the work on the part oi the custodians oif the archives did much tO' lighten the burden O'f the task. To Commissioner W. T. Harris and Mr. H. C. Putnam, Librarian oi Congress, who' provided valuable data from col- lege catalogues not elsewhere available, I desire to. render ac- knowledgment. To' Dean James E. Russell, tO' Professor Gonzales Lodge, and to Proifessor Paul Monroe, under w^hose supervision the work was conducted, and toi President Nich- olas Murray Butler, who' suggested the theme, am I grateful for the privileges the investigation afforded. S CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Introductory ii CHAPTER n The Five Formal Documents The Three Periods . 20 Derivation of Ideals 20 Breaking of the bond 21 The Dunster manuscript ... 22 The first program of study . 31 The manuscript of i6go 32 Yale in 1713 33 President Wadsworth's diary 34 " Orders and appointment to be observed in ye Collegiate training." 35 Princeton's beginnings . 38 Reflections of the scientific activities in England 3g The prize for culture 40 The scheme of study 41 Increase in system . . . ... .42 The Yale confession of Faith .... 44 The importance of Divinity 47 Harvard in 1759 ... .... . . 48 The tutorial system ... . ... .... .... 49 Broader lines . . . . . . 51 Establishment at Yale of a Professorship of Mathematics and Philo- sophy, 1771 ... 53 Position of Science, Mathematics, EngHsh and the modern languages. S4 The efficiency of the method ... 54 Final statement of the original scheme 54 CHAPTER III The New Tendency Kings College, 17S4 • • • ■ S6 The advertisement in the New York Gazette 57 Laws and Orders of 1755 . • • ■ 58 The variety of training of Kings Professors . . . • 59 The ideal of the founders 59 7 8 CONTENTS FACE The pamphlet called "The College of Mirania." • • 60 Analysis of this document 61 Its place in our educational history 65 Its author, the first Provost of Pennsylvania 66 His adaptation of the plan as outlined in the pamphlet for use of the College in Philadelphia 67 Comparison with the Princeton Program and with the Scotch revision of the course of study in 1753 • 72 Its relation to the reforms at William and Mary in 1779 73 Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia 74 Close of the Colonial Period 76 CHAPTER IV Growth and Development The influence of the Revolutionary War 78 The decline of divinity and the rise of modern languages and history. 79 President Stiles of Yale 79 His diary 8d The "revision" at Harvard in 1787 82 Dr. Waterhouse Lectures in Astronomy and Philosophy 82 The text-books required from " rusticated " students '88 Text-books in use at Yale during the i8th century 90 The reorganization of Kings 92 Its liberal and comprehensive program .... 93 Its close approach to Dr. Smith's ideal 94 The pamphlet of 1792 96 The report of 1810 97 The persistency of the ideal of "development" in the college .... loi The traditions elsewhere 108 Brown University and its relation to Princeton io8 Laws of 1783 . ... 109 The backwardness of its mathematical development no Laws of 1803 ... Ill History at Brown and at Harvard . . 112 Divinity and the Classics at Princeton 113 The advice of President Samuel S. Smith 113 An interesting correspondence 115 Pamphlet of 1803 . . 118 Brown University in 1827. . . 122 Divergence of Brown from Princeton 123 Growth of Harvard and Yale 123 The adoption of the program of Rev. William Smith 123 The segregation of departments 124 The text-book question . 124 President Wayland's Report at Brown 124 Equipment of gymnasium 125 CONTENTS Q PAGE Restrictions and rigidity . . J26 Catalogues of Harvard, 1825 126 Yale, 1824 . J28 Decline of Pennsylvania . 129 Rules and statues of 1811, 1817, 1820 135 The change of ideal I^j The importance of "wholesome discipline." 141 A faculty for "government and instruction." . .141 The growth of uniformity and drill . . . . . 142 Pamphlet published in New Haven, 1828 143 Its widespread efTect . . .... 144 A new definition of the curriculum . . . 145 CHAPTER V Other Ideals Two rcDorts of the Faculty of Amherst College, 1827 ... . . 155 A chair of the Science of Education urged 156 Union College, 1802 . 157 University of Vermont . 158 A period of experiment and discussion . . 160 President Wayland of Brown . 161 The return of American students from Germany 161 The growth of co-operation . . 161 Lehr and Lern freiheit . 162 German influence . . . 162 The Spirit of the Age and the inauguration of Josiah Quincy as Presi- dent of Harvard . 163 The conservative view ... . 163 President Noah Porter of Yale . 163 The radical statement of Charles Francis Adams . 164 The permanence of the ideal of President Quincy 165 Cornell, 1867 . .... ... 165 The reform of the curriculum at Harvard in 1869 170 CHAPTER VI MoDERx Reform Since 1870 ..... . • . ■ • 171 Definement of aim • 171 Change merely one of equipment and method . 171 Laboratory system • • • ■ 171 Source of reform ■ • • 171 "Seminars." • • .... ... 172 The opening of libraries, gymnastics . . ... . 172 Liberalization and equalization of studies . . .... 173 The discovery of the individual . . • • 174 10 CONTENTS PAGE The cultural ideal 174 The elective system 175 The practical worth of the academic course 175 Special Schools of Science I7S The place of the classics in the modern curriculum 176 Specialization 178 The tendency to shorten or abridge the course 179 Abolishment of "classes." i8o- The commercial value of the degree 180 The change of method in English literature, language and rhetoric . . 181 The revival of Forensics . 182 Growth of history and the allied subjects 182 Evolution of subject matter 183 Worthfulness of the college course 183 What is now meant by a college education ... . . . 183 Definition ... 183 Bibliography 184 Vita i8r CHAPTER I Introductory The collegiate curriculum in the United States is a growth and not an accident. Its genesis is to be found, as is that of many other O'f our institutions, in the older world, whence our ancestors came. The earlier forms of its establishment here follow closely the European prototype. But as time elapses, circumstances change, needs increase, and demands upon it multiply, the pristine simplicity of the original is altered, and the present product astonishes by the complexity of its di- versity and the variety of its detail. Yet, from- the earliest toi the latest record O'f the course o-f study in our colleges, an unbroken chain O'f development can be traced, a logical se- quence of events can be established, and the causes that led to the inevitable consequence can be clearly shown. It is even possible tO' push the inquiry one step farther and to- discover whence the inspiration was first derived; tO' trace the educa- tional ideals, that now govern and that have governed our collegiate instruction, back tO' their source and to reveal the vitality of the union that exists between the higher education here to-day and the higher education of past times. That this phase of college life has been heretofore neg- lected is a trifle surprising. Even sO' soon as collegiate instruc- tion began, the reporter and the historian seem to^ have made it their particular business tO' concern themselves with many minor details o-f the management of the enterprises. We have full accounts O'f lotteries conducted for their support. The gifts and donations from interested people are carefully spread upon the records. The cost of new buildings and the cere- monies of dedications and commencements, with the attend- ing riots and disturbances, are set forth in elaborate tenns, but 12 COLLEGE CURRICULUM IN THE UNITED STATES the real work of the college — the lectures given, the recitations heard, the text-books used — ^has been either wholly neglected or is mentioned in such brief fashion as to give but a vague idea of what was the actual condition of things scholastic. While we might naturally expect that something very like the actual state of things migtit exist in the earliest times, be- fore the country was organized, still it would seem reasonable that, when accounts began to be regularly kept, the record of the course of study in the colleges would become a public care. But the historians of the colleges refrain from giving much in- formation, that has lain directly at their hands, and have passed on to the more striking fields oi architecture, or of finance, or tO' the eulogy oif some favorite professor or remarkable president. Interesting as are these tributes to scholarly worth, they uniformly fall short of the accurate information desired, and we search their pages vainly to find, in brief, an account of classroom methods or scholastic discipline O'f a given period. The only sources from which tO' study the collegiate curriculum in the United States, are the private records of the Trustees and the Faculties of the various colleges, sO' far as they have been preserved, supplemented by the catalogues O'f the institu- tions, " laws and statutes," and " rules for the government," printed reports of committees of one body or the other, and such diaries and memoirs as singular students have sometimes occuped their seemingly abundant leisure in co'mpiling. It is fro'm documents of this character that the data contained in the following chapters have been secured. The conclusions reached, from a study of these docu- ments, divide themselves into two classes : conclusions that relate to the effect of the college course upon the community ; and secondly, and conversely, the effect oi the community upon the college course. In the one case we are led directly toi an examination of the schedules and plans of recitations and lec- tures of the various institutions ; in the other, to a considera- tion of 'the environment in which the institutions have been placed, and to a review oi the criticisms, direct or indirect, to which they have been exposed. These two forces in action and INTRODUCTORY 1 2 reaction, show a result to-day in the courses of study as at pres- ent authorized, and, by their interplay o-f strength, have molded and fashioned into a distinct type of the higher education, the curriculum' for the college in the United States. Placed midway between the secondary school and a pro- fessional or a public life, the college in the United States has been effectually prevented from becoming a cloister. Its re- lations to the public life have been too close and too vital for it to withdraw itself fro'm the concerns of general existence, and its sensitiveness to criticism has clearly manifested that it has well recognized its peculiar mission to train citizens for service in a free and independent state. Its course of study has been molded to attain this result. The changes in the methods em- ployed have all of them looked 'toward greater facility for ac- complishing this end. The variety that individual idiosyncrasy of circumstance has sometimes dictated to certain institutions, has only emphasized the fundamental idea. The constantly in- creasing tendency to introduce subjects that shall be practical and definite in their application, is direct in its bearing on this purpose. With remarkable uniformity the institutions in- volved have accepted this idea. With unity of aim has come uniformity of method. Inspection of catalo'gues shows that in the amount of work required, previous to receiving the first degree in arts, there is a singular agreement between colleges geographically widely separated. Uniformity of entrance con- ditions is already almost an accomplished fact. And, with the centralization of the graduate work of the country, that is now (1902) rendered possible by the incorporation of the Carnegie Institution, there should come to the college a definite limita- tion of its field of usefulness that should make for sound learn- ing in its peculiar domain. The necessity of limiting the work of the college has arisen only in later times as subjects have pressed for entrance upon its formerly meagre curriculum'. In general, it may be said that admission is now denied to no subject whose qualifications for entrance satisfy the demands of culture in its broad and liberal sense. It is the ideal of the college that its graduates H COLLEGE CURRICULUM IN THE UNITED STATES be prepared for citizenship by their course of study within its walls, in a way most fully to develop tiheir best powers oif mind and establish their characters on the basis of in- tegrity and truth. For each institution the problem has pre- sented different phases. It is in this particular that the in- fluence of the community upon the' college has been felt. The ideals of the community have become the ideals of the col- lege, and that college has done its most perfect work whose sympathy with the community has been most vital and close. Passing from' the local to the wider environment, it will be seen that that college becomes most truly national which re^ fleets and reproduces, in its curriculum, the national ideal. But this nationalization of education has been of slow growth. It can hardly yet be said to be thoroughly compre- hended. A long way tO'Ward it was attained, in 1892, when the Report of the Committee of Ten was published, which re- vealed the importance of the larger outlook. The unity that makes strength was advanced, and many of the barriers of provincial prejudice and sectarian conceit were done away. These barriers and this conceit were detrimental to education as well as tO' a true natio'nal unity, and date in education, as in politics, from the Colonial period of our history. Possibly they have been fastened longer in our colleges than in any other walks of life, because of the segregation that accom- panies the college career. In their best form they develop intoi intense lo'yalty tO' the special college peculiar to alumni. In their worst, they are exhibited in a narrow intolerance of practices and methods of education differing from those in vogue in the special institution. Fo'rtunately this phase of controversy seldom now finds expression in the public prints nor on the public stage. The catho'licity of the college course is well nigh established. College boards of officers realize they are all working towards a grand common end, and that petty squabbles over methods and devices are too much be- neath their dignity to' receive attention. Yet the road to this calm' and equable freedom is strewn with many pamphlets of truly vitriolic quality. Around no INTRODUCTORY I 5 points did they accumulate in greater number nor with greater strength ol utterance than at the final stage of the move- ment toward liberty O'f election, and during the early debate aroused by the suggested removal of Greek from the required course of study. The period may be roughly indicated by the year 1870, for while one movement antedated this exact twelvemonth by some years, and the latter is still a living issue in educational circles, this time marks the launching of the largest experiment in college education that this country has witnessed and is the true beginning of the modern period. If imitation is the sincerest flattery, the advocates of the reforms instituted in the colleges about 1870, must be grati- fied by the manner in which there has been so' general an accep- tance of their most important suggestions. That these ideas met with the cordial approbation of the clearest thinkers at that time was due to the intrinsic excellence O'f the notions formu- lated and to the restricted scheme of studies that then occupied the students' attention. This scheme had come down from the Revolutionary era, and, in theory, had remained practically unchanged since its original promulgation. In theory it was a well-proportioned scheme of study. But in practice its sym- metry had been lost. What was meant as a comprehensive equipment for life had degenerated, as Francis Wayland points out, into a routine o-f required study which, based on text- books, left but little for the professor to accomplish save the infantile hearing of the lesson, and afiforded the student no mental growth and but little intellectual activity. Here and there an individual professor broke away from' the established system,, or a bright pupil carried the professor beyond the narrow confines of the prescribed curriculum, but the general tone of intellectual life in the colleges in the early nineteenth century was low and tame. Nothing seemed to thrive save as the individual genius of some educator lifted his favorite sub- ject into momentary prominence. Especially was this true of the classical departments which for a long time exercised a peculiar dominance over college affairs. In the original scheme of a course of study for an 1 6 COLLEGE CURRICULUM IN THE UNITED STATES American college, the position of the classics in the curriculum appears to have been gauged in its proper proportion. The wonder is that these subjects should have succeeded in burst- ing the trammels of restraint and overburdening the course of study at the expense of their fellows. Their power arose, doubtless, because they proceeded from a well-organized base. The preparatory course was definite and clear. The other subjects in the list were somewhat vaguely understood, and except in the case of mathematics, really required elabor- ate machinery for their complete elucidation. We notice with something akin to awe, the reverent way in which the " philosophical apparatus " is spoken of, and at the beginning of the century the possession of the " orrery " constructed by David Rittenhouse seems to have lifted one of our colleges, at a single bound, into a position of jealous distinction. Yet, later, this same institution (Princeton), proudly boasts of its " golden succession " of classical professors as if by the effi- ciency and scholarship oi the departments of Latin and Greek alone was tO' be judged the true worth of the college as an educational force. Certainly, we owe the classics a debt we can hardly repay, for the valuable conservative influence they exerted upon our immature curriculum. At a time when the wells of pO'etry and art, along other lines, were closed, or had not yet been opened, they provided reservoirs of culture and refinement of taste. The whole career oif Latin and Greek, their rise intO' unexampled prominence, and the strength with which they resisted encroachments on their prerogative, coupled with their alliance with the other established subjects to pre- vent the opening of the curriculum' to new sciences and lan- guages, f oirms an interesting chapter O'f our college 'annals. The protracted do'minance of these subjects is difficult to' explain unless we take into consideration the wonderful effect pro- duced upon the scholarship of this post-Revolutionary period by the publication in 1828, in Vol. XV. O'f the American Journal O'f Science, of a certain formal report by a college faculty. The histo'ry 'of the college curriculum' in the United States INTRODUCTORY j- mig-ht well be written from five formal papers. The two latest we have spoken of— the incorporation of the Carnegie Institu- tion and the Report of the Committee of Ten. Of the third, though it related specifically to the work of a single college (Yale), the effect of it was widespread. It was long quoted in the institution itself as a final statement of what the aim of education should always be, and, from the number of younger institutions which were established under its influence, we can gather how powerful it was in forming public opinion on the subject of the proper curriculum. But even in its strongest recommendations, the report shows how contrary to the proper ideals of American scholarship was the scheme advocated. There is in it no room for growth and flexibility, and, when considered closely, it is seen to consist of a local adaptation of an earlier and more admirable paper that had been put intoi active sei-vice years before in another and younger establishment. Here, on the one hand, is a plan of a course of study prepared and put in force in the University of Pennsylvania in 1756. With it we place the report of the Yale Faculty Committee, as published in Vol. XV. of the American Journal of Science. They might almost be transposed, so nearly identical is their subject matter. When taken together the two papers reveal how aibsolutely fatal to the growth of our colleges was the Revolutionary War. The troubled condition of the Revolutionary times not only ditoinished the number o'f the students, and destroyed' the records and the buildings in which the colleges were housed, but gave little leisure for those in charge of the establishments to plarii for alterations of methods of instruction. When they assembled on the re- turn of peace, it sufficed if they could conduct affairs even nominally along the old lines. The war had effectually closed the avenue whence new ideas were to be derived, and the bare question of subsistence was too prominently in the foreground to admit of serious discussion of anything else. Books were scarce and costly. Authorship of texts and manuals was not yet a trade. The sciences were young and timid at their first entrance, and the Romance tongues were suspiciously easy of l8 COLLEGE CURRICULUM IN THE UNITED STATES acquisition and bore the brand of popery, at least in New Eng- land. The Teutonic branch of literature was too uncouth and barbarous to merit notice, except among a few unfortunate in- dividuals who were burdened with it for a mother tongue, and these were encouraged to slough off thdr disadvantage as so'on as possible. There was no source of a new supply of ideas, and well was it that in 1756 the clear, individual think- ing of William' Smith, or the accident o'f his earlier association with Scottish educational reform, had provided the American College with a program' adequate for its immediate needs. That this course of study long outlived its usefulness, and was distorted almost beyond recognition at the hands of zealous partisans of special dep'artments, should not dinxinish our re^ gard for it as an epoch-making system. Previous to the pubHcation of the program^ prepared by the first Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, there was nothing in the United States that in any way resembled a modern course of study. Columbia and Princeton were hardly organized. William and Mary, in Virginia, was closely fol- lowing the example of Oxford. Yale, in Connecticut, and Harvard, in Massachusetts, were practicing the principles enunciated by Henry Dunster, the first President O'f the latter institution, in 1642, and had sworn allegiance to' our earliest collegiate standing order and to a curriculum that had Divinity for its corner-stone. It is difficult for us tO' picture the feebleness of these early colleges. We cannot overestimate the devotion of their friends. However grand and splendid the future of these in- stitutions, it can never equal the fame that should rightly be- long to the fearless, indomitable heroes who labored faithfully, in painful surroundings, zealously and anxiously to found, es- tablish and consecrate to sound learning these objects of their care. The closer we study their lives and circumstances, the greater seemi their tasks. With no' resources but " an uncon- querable hope," in a wilderness newly cleared, where civiliza- tion groped its way, they successfully reared in barren fields their rough-hewn buildings and laid the foundations of our INTRODUCTORY ig collegiate education. What was then done in New York, in Elizabethtown, in Philadelphia, in Williamsburg', on the banks of the Connecticut, and on the shores of the Charles, has been felt not only in the institutions in these places es- tablished, but has influenced the whole course of our collegiate history through the length and breadth of the land. In a discussion of the history O'f the Curriculum of the Col- leges in the United States, therefore, it is 'not necessary to con- sider many institutions. The later and the smaller colleges are but children of the older and the larger. The traditions, customs and government of the one have been carried toi the other as the sacred fire brought from' the temple of Vesta lighted the hearth in the newly-established household. It is the larger and the older colleges that present the problem in its clearest shape. It is to these that our chief attention will be directed. CHAPTER II The Five Formal Documents Though the five documents already cited (i. the Laws of President Dtinster, 1642; 2. the Programme of the First Pro- vost of Pennisylvania, 1756; 3. the Report of the Yale faculty, 1828; 4. the reiport of the Committee ol Ten, 1892; 5. the Incorporation of the Carnegie Institution', 1902) contain, in brief, a history of the progress oif the course of study in the col- leges in the United States, in considering, in detail, the curri- culum of the higher education it will be found convenient to divide the subject into three periods, to be denominated re- spectively: The pre-Revolutionary — from the founding of Harvard to the inauguration of the reforms of President Madison at William and Mary, 1636-1779; the post-Revolu- tionary — from the refoirms of President Madison to' the inau- guration of President Eliot of Harvard, 1779-1869; tihe Mod- ern period from the inauguration of President Eliot to the Incorporation of the Carnegie Institution, 1869-1902. The first of these periods is the period of 'beginnings. The ideals are those of the institutions whence the first oifficers and friends of the new establishments came, and there is no thought that new occasions will teach any new duties to the young seminaries in the wilderu'ess. Each was to be, so far as possi- ble, an Oxford, a Cambridge, or an Edinburgh, and success was attained only soi far as the model set by the parent was. reproduced by the child/ 1 "And they are hereby Authoriz'd & impowered by their President & in his Abfence by the Senior FeMo^v or one of the Fellows appointed by themfelves at the Anniversary 'Commencements or at any other times and at all Times hereafter to Admit to & Conifer any & all the Learned Degrees which can or ought to be given and coniferred in any of the College's and Univerfities in Aau'eriica, Europe & particularly an the Uni- versity in 'Catabridge & Edinburg