Many know that drinking and dueling are the prominent vices of the university student It is to the credit of the university system, in its beginnings in this country that these relics of barbarism of the middle ages arc unrecognized and do not prevent the student from devoting all his best energies to the work which he has chosen for the develop ment of his higher and better self. DISCIPLINE IN COLLEGES. THERE are two opposing systems of dis cipline in American colleges. The one considers the student as still a boy and hedges, him about with a close parental government, controls all his actions and gives him demerit marks for ill conduct. The other is copied after the government of the universities of Europe. It would treat the student as a man responsible only to himself, permits him to be present or absent as he chooses, and other wise regards him as a free and independent American citizen. The one argues that the student must be prepared to enter the world through close supervision. The other believes that he must learn before he enters the world that he must depend on himself. Now the college student is both a man and a boy. The college receives him as a youth just merging into manhood. It turns him out a man if he ever will be one. A great many colleges, however, make no note of this fact, and continue the same discipline throughout the entire course. A Senior is subject to the same laws as a Freshman. A man fully de veloped is watched over with a parental care that controls all his actions. This kind of government may do very well for the first year of a college course, until a student becomes accustomed to college life and learns what is expected of him, but we think it should then gradually give way to a system of individual responsibility. If con tinued too long, it is most pernicious in its THE FREE LANCE. results, The habits and traditions in which men have been trained when they reach the Senior year are such that they are yet boys in responsibility. And, although they are very manly and independent in some direc tions, they are dependent and unmanly in their methods of study, in their conception of duty, in their scholarship and in all that affects the institution to which they belong. Take the matter of grades and forced at tendance at all recitations. If this childish system is continued throughout the course, the student comes to look on his studies as daily tasks, and if no lesson has been as signed, he considers he has nothing to do. He does not consider that he is any way re sponsible to himself. While, if he be allowed to be absent from a certain number of recita tions he will come to realize that the recita tion is for his own benefit, and not a certain amount of work performed for the Professor. President Eliot, of Harvard, says in a recent report: “The inventive activity of the in structors has undoubtedly been stimulated by the gradual abolition of all disciplinary methods of enforcing attendance at recita tions and lectures. The student now goes to the lecture room because he is interested in the work done there ; or because it is easier to accomplish the prescribed work of the course with the daily help of the instructor than in any other way; or because he finds attendance indispensable if he would pass the stated examinations ; or finally, because he is urged to attend by his friends, parents, or the officers of the university on the ground that attendance is both an advantage and a duty.” While we would not advise making attendance entirely voluntary, except at large universities, we think a liberal system of cuts should be allowed at all colleges. It is much the same in regard to the direct government of the body of students. Where they are directly and continually responsible to the college authorities for their conduct,
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