"If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
himself.
The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor."
I believe college used to be much more about being close to the cutting edge of knowledge and research (thus why instructors have historically been research professors), whereas now it is more like an extension of high school.
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself.
The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/1175...