Word: subjects
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1873-1873
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...need not re-echo their hasty judgments on the soundness of those views. Let us not admit religious controversy into the colums of our College papers; or, if we choose to do so, for the sake of truth let no one write an article on a religious or controversial subject without an extended course of reading on both sides of the question which he purposes to handle. Let us at least take this precaution against the increase among us of the shallower and more flippant kind of scepticism...
...given out at the beginning of the year, these results could be reached as well, or even better; for it would then serve as an index, or table of contents, to the work to be done, and some recitations that now are nearly useless because their connection with the subject as a whole is not realized, would confer other blessings than those of heavenly sleep. Such a method would, besides, prevent some serious evils belonging to the present...
...evils are these: First, cramming. It is true any vague objection to a way of study is generally expressed by calling it cramming. But though it is doubtful or false that a prolonged grind for an examination in which the student gets a general understanding of his subject is mentally destructive, no one can question the danger of merely committing to memory a mass of details, both when general relations are not grasped by the student's own efforts, and also when they are given to him as they are in a syllabus. Cramming of this kind certainly does...
Second, the injustice of ranking nearly alike two men, of whom one has a real knowledge of his subject, and the other only what his syllabus has hinted to him. Sir James Stephen has pointed out that in history it is quite possible for an adroit and dexterous man who has coolness, tact, and experience in examinations to assume the deceptive semblance of great erudition. It often happens that one who from much reading is acquainted with the minutiae as well as the outlines of history gets no higher mark (or perhaps not so high) than another who has confined...
...Whenever a student in Harvard College or in the Lawrence Scientific School shall have passed, in either of these departments of the University, an examination on a subject taught in the Medical School, the certificate of his having passed the College or Scientific School examination shall be accepted in lieu of an examination in that subject at the Medical School...