Word: students
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...long since classical instruction here rested on a basis entirely different from the present. The works of the grand old thinkers of Greece and Rome were read, not as etymological and grammatical puzzles, but for their beauties of idea and of expression. The student was not asked to rack his brains and search the grammar for the peculiar technical reason for an uncommon use of a subjunctive, or to give a long dissertation on the ground of a Grecian author's choice of the infinitive with av instead of the optative. It was supposed that the average student had sufficient...
...classic literature of antiquity was read for itself. The student could then realize the true beauties of the work in his hands; and a knowledge of construction would come of itself from familiarity with the pages of the model writers of old. One did not read Latin and Greek with the view of becoming a pedagogue. One read them with enthusiasm and pleasure, as they should be read, as a means of elegant culture; and the student of those days graduated with a lively admiration, if not a decided taste and love, for those grand old pages which had been...
...these men forget that the principles, which serve so admirably to guide the researches of finished scholars and learned men of leisure, are hardly as applicable to the student. They forget that the critical care with which they search the intricacies of works, to themselves familiar, is hardly appreciable, and certainly not enjoyable, to the student who for the first time opens these pages. They do not remember the good old-fashioned education which gave them their fondness for the life they now pursue, but only call to mind their new theories, and apply them practically to the rising generations...
...long as these things are so, the student may study conscientiously, but his study will be a task. He may pore over the pages of his classics in the prescribed manner, but he will rise from his labor with no notion of the grandeur of the work which he has read, - only with a vague idea of disconnected subjunctives and confused optatives floating through his troubled and wearied brain...
...student life will not be what it used, I fear...