CHAPTER XII

INDIRECT EDUCATION

THE utilization of by-products is a characteristic of modern industry. This utilization has arisen both from the demand for the byproducts and also from improved machinery and more effective industrial processes. A similar condition has emerged in education.

In one form of education, in particular, is this demand made evident. The vacation period has, it is now seen, become too long. The wastefulness of this period has been keenly and generally recognized. The evil has been manifest both in the public school and in the college. The pupils of the common school have, on the whole, squandered the summer vacation. Most of them spend their summers at home. They are not able to indulge in prolonged or recreative outings. The general condition of such boys in the city is lawlessness. If such boys, living in the country, are not obliged to work, they too incur many perils. Every wharf and mill pond may be

come an object of dread to parents. But in both urban and rural districts, these boys are Bohemians or barbarians. They return to their books early in September not with an appetite made keen by proper abstinence, but with a distaste for intellectual toil created by a barbarian life.

A similar condition is found existing in the colleges. The college year has, in fact, been greatly shortened within the last two generations. Vacations have correspondingly increased. The positive working time in many colleges has now become less than one half of the calendar year. This brief period becomes still more significant when it is recognized that out of it must be taken from four to six weeks for examinations. In the last half-century the normal college year was shortened from fortytwo weeks to thirty-five and thirty-six weeks. The reasons of this abbreviation are manifold, some imaginary and others real.

It is to be noted that the long vacation in many colleges fell in the earlier time in the winter. This custom arose simply from the fact that many men were supporting themselves. Many men are now supporting themselves also in college, but in the early time

the best method of securing self-support was teaching the country school. The country school was kept in the winter time. Therefore, the custom of the college adapted itself to the need of many indigent students. The names of some of the best men in American life might be cited, who made their way through college by keeping school in the winter. But, as schools, even in the country, have come to be kept not twelve weeks in the winter and six in the summer, but rather thirty-six weeks, the opportunity open to college men of using a winter vacation in this way has gradually closed.

One reason of the collegiate change lies doubtless in the change in the social customs of the American people. A summer vacation and a long summer vacation has come to be the rule for many. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the college to go against a social custom that seems to be imbedded so firmly in American life as is the long summer vacation.

A further cause is found in the demands of the professors of the college. The number of teachers in the American college who go abroad each summer rapidly increases. For

such a trip and residence a long time is desirable. It is also to be said that the practice of American teachers going abroad is to be promoted. Their worth to their college becomes greater. Furthermore, the writing of books is now regarded as one of the duties that devolve upon teachers. Such work can be done only in the face of special difficulties, during the performance of the ordinary college routine; summer offers a fitting opportunity. I recently asked a professor of Yale College, who is the author of several volumes demanding much research, how he was able to write them. His laconic answer was, "In the vacation." It is at once to be said that the shortened college year and the lengthened vacation have arisen rather from the demands of the professors than from the demands of the students. The element, too, of the summer's heat has relation to the question. Colleges are becoming more and more urban, less and less rural. The depleting and disintegrating influence of the heat is more felt in a college placed as Harvard and Yale are now placed than it was felt in the villages of Cambridge and New Haven of sixty or even forty years ago.

This shortening of the college year is, of course, a lengthening of the vacation for the college student. The use which the student makes of the summer vacation is a very serious question.

The significance of the shortened college year is greater than it might appear to be at first thought. For I cannot doubt that there is a certain positive and vital relation between the usefulness of the college to its students and the length of time that the students spend in college. Of course, certain men get as much from college in one week as other men get in four weeks, certain men get as much in one year as other men get in the whole course, but it is not to be doubted, in general, that a certain length of time is necessary for the student to receive that richness of culture and that discipline of training which it is the purpose of the college to bestow. The college cannot do as much for its men or women in thirty-six weeks as it can in forty-two, and certainly it does much less for them in thirty weeks of advancing instruction than it can in forty.

At this point the current discussion as to the shortening of the college course from four years to three has some value. At the present