The Victorian Chronology of Our Liberal Education
T ODAY our liberal-arts colleges are the scene of rivalry between several contending philosophies of education, each asserting its right to dominate the future of American culture. Some of these base their claims on novelty, others on antiquity. Actually, the classic formulations of these rival theories are not so very novel nor so very antique. More attention should be paid to their appearance in recent history. For serious decisions on education are sometimes made on the basis of false conceptions concerning what is traditional, or concerning some apparent Wave of the Future. In this brief summary I wish to present a framework to correct a chronological confusion that seems to have had great persistence. What generation is the original habitat of the chief schemes that are being put before us for a decision? I shall not take time to do justice to any one of these philosophies; my purpose is not to evaluate each theory, but to date it, and to tell enough about it to identify "new friends with old faces." If I seem to personify whole movements in a few spokesmen, it is because of the conviction that a struggle becomes intellectually profitable only for those who turn to the vigorous defense of each position by its own leaders. When did this controversy start? A hundred years ago learning was still, as in the Middle Ages, supposed to be the handmaid of religion. Much emphasis was placed on theology. (Today this often seems to be the only subject not offered in a university catalogue.) And in his preparation for university work, the student still, as in the Middle Ages, devoted his time largely to Latin grammar. The "grammar school," literally, and "Theology, the Queen of the Sciences"-these phrases supply the key. Even the Renaissance had not fundamentally altered this educational system, and it reached its supreme expression only when it was already on the way out. For the classic statement of this conception is John Henry Newman's Idea of a University (I852-58). In this book Newman sets forth the principles of liberal education which he had known at Oxford before his conversion to the Catholic Church, while Oxford was still, as he called it, "a medieval university." He says at the beginning: