Word: frees
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...whole, are quite interesting, but become, when dealt out piecemeal, - ground out in two-page doses, - inexpressibly tedious! By a little study in the long vacation, one can easily anticipate one or more of the required courses, as a little work, if regular, does wonders, when the mind is free from the many engrossing attractions of college life. The time gained by this anticipation can be employed very profitably; for a man can give more time to some favorite elective, and become far more expert in science, or critical in the languages, without making a hermit of himself, with bolted...
...that they pass here they turn upon their own footsteps without making a single advance, like the horses in a riding-school. They graduate without any knowledge of French literature, or of the history of other nations. And not only are they ignorant, but the germs even of all free thought are, as it were, crushed out of them. They have no longer any independent ideas when they have completed their course. They are, in a word, pure machines. Such is the sad result of the clerical and Jesuitical instruction...
Harvard men have the good fortune to be free from all interference of the instructors in regard to this matter. At other colleges it is different. At Amherst, at the beginning of the present college year, Dr. Hitchcock, the supervisor of the physical education of the students, caused to be circulated in the Freshman class a paper by which all who signed were bound to neither smoke nor drink. Such a proceeding here would seem absurd. Few would sign; those who did would be influenced far more by their previous prejudices or a desire to oblige, than by a belief...
...place, the children are not sent to school, or are taken away too young. Every commune, as I told you, pays its own teacher. It gives him a fixed salary, varying between four hundred and eight hundred francs a year. But this salary paid, the instruction is still not free. Each child has to contribute in addition what amounts to about a sou per day. Now, fathers - in districts where civilization has not yet penetrated - hesitate to pay this assessment. These people cannot themselves read, they cannot write, and yet they have lived, eaten, even amassed a little wealth...
This antipathy is, if anything, a greater cause of ignorance than the expense which schooling involves. Our instruction, it is true, is not free. Yet very few can allege poverty as the cause of their ignorance. Besides the fact that a son a day is not a large sum to find, every year the prefect makes out a list of the indigent; that is to say, that in each village there are ten, fifteen, or twenty-five children who receive their education free. This system, it must be admitted, has several faults. These objects of charity go to school generally...