Word: agee
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...boarding school which we wish to discredit; the argument, namely, that a young boy, by the experience of a boarding school life, is made manly, self-reliant, independent. The words are often used with very little distinction, but the underlying idea is that the boy at an early age begins to enjoy the privileges and to be credited with certain of the powers of a man, and so becomes decidedly active in shaping his own destiny. There is truth in these statements, but it needs all the American's love of self-sufficiency, and a little thoughtlessness besides, to accept...
...age of fourteen or less, a boy's place is at home. The influences which surround him should be home influences. The formation of his character can not safely be trusted to any one less interested in him or less intimate with him than his parents; least of all can it be left to his own real childishness under the excitement of a new life. And in this character the time has not come for the development of a vigorous independence; disregard of authority follows it too closely in young people. What the boy wants, and what he can best...
When the very moderate grade of the Harvard College admission examinations is considered, it seems absurd that the average age of the entering classes should be close to nineteen years; yet such is still the case. Comparison with foreign countries in this respect is mortifying. In England, France, of Germany, boys of sixteen, or at the most seventeen, are as far advanced in their education as are college freshmen here. More than this, what they have learned they are familiar with in a way unknown to the boy who has here squeezed through college examinations which are often the sole...
...with very little actual knowledge, and with no systematic training at all. In the process of hurrying such backward scholars into college, it is no wonder, and but small blame to the instructors, that the immediate preparatory training is itself insufficient and unsatisfactory. It is therefore not only the age of the Harvard freshman, but too often his poor mental equipment which must be deplored...
...above mentioned have not been newly recognized, and already much has been done by earnest men to remedy them. But such reform takes time. Many classes must still suffer from the faults of their early training. There is promise for the future, though, in the steady decrease in the ages of successive freshman classes. Since 1889 this decrease has been only once interrupted, when in both 1892 and 1893 the average age was eighteen years and eleven months. This year again it has gone down to eighteen years and ten months. The fall is very slow but it is probably...