Word: writes
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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EDITORS MAGENTA, - In view of the new boating-system at Harvard, you asked me to write you what I know about college rowing here. The science of rowing, or, rather, of turning out a good crew, may be resolved into one grand and simple element, and a few minor ones. The all important element is "tubbing"; a "tub" being a clinker-built boat about twelve feet long and four wide, with an experienced oarsman sitting in the stern, and two green hands, or otherwise, at the oars. I say "or otherwise," for even the members of the 'Varsity are tubbed...
This is the result of our system of education, - a result, I am persuaded, not wholly unconnected with our frequent revolutions. On the one hand, our primary instruction is too much neglected. Thousands of voters know not how to read or write. On the other, our secondary instruction is too aristocratic. It should only be the privilege of a small number, and not the common rule for all. Moreover, this instruction draws too exclusively on antique sources. It presents us with the society of antiquity in its most flourishing condition. Sparta, Athens, Rome, are shown us as ideal republics...
...plan works in practice is this. The men may be divided roughly into two classes, - the first consisting of those who know little or nothing about the subject, the second, of those better informed. Members of the first class calculate how many pages they can write in an hour, fill that amount of paper with headings of paragraphs, and are then ready. A consideration which gives the plan a favorable reception among this class is, that they need only find some one who has written out a good abstract and learn it, thereby saving themselves a vast amount of trouble...
This has been the method of preparation for these examinations, and when it is necessary to write so much in so short a time, and to exercise so great discrimination as to what shall be taken out of extra pages, it seems to me the only method of accomplishing in any measure what is required. These examinations demand cramming, and little else, and as such, they are grossly inconsistent with the avowed opinions of all instructors on this matter. The plan does not differ much from giving out the questions of an ordinary examination a day or two previous...
...University Reporter runs a private dictionary. It has a long article headed "Yaine"; which name occurs throughout; probably the author was undecided whether to write up Yates or Taine, and so concluded to mix thing. In the same piece we have "Thackery," "jolley," "hypocrasy," and "Mesey," one of Dickens's characters, probably either Miggs, Meagles, or Miss La Creevy...