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THE HIGHER EDUCATION

will not be misplaced. It seems to me, then, that little fault could be found with any educator of youth, whose mind worked in a moderately conservative fashion, if he should decline to estimate highly the detailed facts which make up the very limited experience of the New Education. In other words, I do not think that the trial of the Harvard method is yet old enough to be critically weighed and pronounced upon. It is true that the elective system was adopted there, to a certain small extent, as long ago as 1825. But until 1879 "some prescribed study remained" for juniors; till 1884 for sophomores. During only a single year have freshmen in Harvard College chosen a majority of their own studies. But it is precisely to making all of the last two years of the college course elective, and to giving any considerable play to the elective system in the earlier years, that the opponents of the Harvard method have most decided objections. For it by no means follows that, because some choice of his own studies is good for the young man of twenty-one or twenty-two years, therefore the entire control of his studies should be committed to the boy from eighteen to twenty. As to whether it is wise that freshmen and sophomores should be placed completely under the elective system, Harvard itself has, then, barely two years of experience; and for the upper classes only a few years more. No