Who Is Charles Eliot Part 4: The New Education Part 2: The Organization

 That's a title.

Nice of Eliot to have a shorter article tonight. I played games with my wife when I'd normally have started blogging. The beginning of the article establishes what Eliot thinks a boy (not many girls in college yet) should learn up until about 17 (the colleges he's looking at generally admit between 16 and 18). He raises a point he's made several times in some of his other readings, that it's good (both academically and for pleasure) to memorize quotations from great authors you like. "Committing memory choice bits" as he calls it here. I like that he's not super prescriptive about it. (And, in fact, makes an argument against that kind of thing at one point.) No, A REAL MAN MUST BE ABLE TO QUOTE 600 LINES OF SHAKEPEARE. NO SONNETS! I certainly have some amount of that kind of stuff rattling around in my head, but it'd be cool to try to do more. I think I've talked before about trying to do one book or scene or something from The Odyssey, Beowulf, etc.

"It is sometimes said that nothing is worth teaching which is not worth remembering,"

That's a good saying. Maybe I'll try to remember that one.

The worst taught of the three subjects is usually arithmetic. Many a boy of seventeen, who has studied arithmetic ever since he was seven, is unable to divide a whole number by 0.2 with ease and confidence.

 Just multiply by 5, bro.

He says most of science is too hard for young boys. That surprised me. He does think some instruction is appropriate, but mostly practical demonstrations (example, watch the rain erode a road). He advocates learning to draw, for the dexterity practice if nothing else. I'd like to learn how to draw better. Maybe I'll do a drawing challenge on here one day.

According to Eliot, it would cost 300,00 to 400,000 dollars to set up a good school. That's 9 mil or so today.

I'll leave Eliot's last paragraph without comment:

Americans must not sit down contented with their position among the industrial nations. We have inherited civil liberty, social mobility, and immense native resources. The advantages we thus hold over the European nations are inestimable. The question is, not how much our freedom can do for us unaided, but how much we can help freedom by judicious education. We appreciate better than we did ten years ago that true progress in this country means progress for the world. In organizing the new education, we do not labor for ourselves alone.

Freedom will be glorified in her works.