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EDUCATION, NEW AND OLD
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that there is anything magical about this particular number. Some young men would be ready for suffrage earlier; some men are never really ready for it. But a line must be drawn somewhere. And certainly, after the youth has spent two years in the drill of college life, he is much better fitted than when he enters for exercising his choices in respect to the rest of his education; but then only in a limited way. Professor Palmer, however, thinks it almost self-evident that when the boy leaves home, at about eighteen years of age, is the best time for him to hegin to say what he will study; and that, all at once, and from that time onward, he should have the entire say. It seems to me that the very fact of the new surroundings with which college life begins is an argument the other way. After the youth has developed awhile in his new surroundings, has adjusted himself to them, has learned from experience in them how matters pertaining to study go, and what the different courses opening before him are, then, and not till then, should he be summoned to the grave task of deciding. It is better, too, that he should be introduced gradually to the responsibilities of deciding. A headlong plunge into freedom is not a real good. Moreover, I am one of those who still believe that an educated man should be trained to some good degree in each of the four great branches of human knowledge,—in language, including lit-