Word: objective
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...showing the real knowledge of those examined, that, although a good deal of time is uselessly spent in preparation for them, it would be very unfair to give them any importance in determining a student's position. They are interesting as affording examples of the purest cramming. Perhaps the object in giving them was to present the evils of the practice in as striking a light as possible. If so, the plan has been a success...
...accurate of philosophy or history? We could wish it were so, but it is scarcely ever the fact. Since the degree of bachelor is indispensable, since it is the only entrance to all the liberal pursuits, it happens that the obtaining of the degree becomes the principal object. The great aim is not to become educated, but to pass one's baccalaureat. The subjects not demanded on the examination are neglected, and even those required are learned in a superficial manner. Instruction becomes wholly a matter of memory, not of reflection, or judgment. The mind is stuffed, not cultivated...
...President Eliot's return from England it is expected that many minor changes will be introduced in the College, and, perhaps, several of greater moment. These novelties will be modelled, it is to be presumed, on the present systems in vogue at Oxford and at Cambridge, as the chief object of the President's visit to England was to study these systems. To those of us who are of conservative proclivities, the expectation of any changes whatever is, to say the least, disquieting; but when the new regulations are to be copied from the English systems, the prospect is decidedly...
...bucket when compared with the achievements of the scholars of Germany, where, at the universities at least, competitive examinations and rich fellowships are entirely unknown. It is asserted that, by the English system, all inclination for original research is not only not fostered, but is even repressed. If these objections to the Cambridge and Oxford methods are really well founded (and an American can hardly profess to be a judge of the matter except with regard to the comparison between English and German scholarship), any changes founded upon them should be regarded with anything but a friendly eye; and especially...
...other hand, it seems very difficult to assign any sufficient reason for prohibiting smoking in a room of this kind, as none of the arguments which usually hold against it apply in the present case. The old gentlemen and middle-aged females who object to tobacco on principle seldom find their way into Lower Massachusetts; and it is safe to say that not one in a hundred of those who do frequent the room really dislike to have tobacco smoke around them...