got it, we did not want it because
we did not know what to do with it. Now, I am not quarreling with
textual criticism. It would have been all right for that young doctor
(he was younger than I was at that time) to deal with the facts of
textual criticism, with some people, at some time, but it was all wrong
for him to attempt to give those facts to us in our freshman year in the
College of Arts. They were not adapted to our intellectual needs. They
did not fit into our mental stomachs. We could not keep them down, or
in, or something. But the pathetic fact was that the instructor did not
know that they did not fit. I, being older than many in the class and
thus appreciating better the barrenness of the Greek pasture in which we
were trying to graze, finally managed, by a little skilful maneuver, to
escape and to join another group that happened to be in the care of a
real teacher who knew not only Homer but, as well, freshman boys and
girls, the reasons for teaching Homer to freshmen boys and girls, and
how to do it. He was acquainted with both the science and the art of
teaching. Oh, how green was the pasture here, and how abundant and how
nutritious the food! In all my university experience I recall nothing
more delightful.

But this is ancient history? Yes, I know it is. But yet, I am sorry to
say, history repeats itself. Those three great mistakes that that young
doctor made in my Greek class some twenty or more years ago are being
made this very year by young doctors and by old doctors and by many who
are not doctors at all, in one subject or another, in well-nigh every
college or university in the United States. Our instructors do not know
well enough how to adapt knowledge to human needs; they have the
erroneous notion that the chief function of an educational institution
is to impart information; and, too, many of them are afflicted with the
lecture craze.

Touching these three mistakes, let me say, briefly: first, as to the
adaptation of knowledge: the word _education_ is derived from the Latin
_educo_, _educare_, and means _to nourish_, and nourishment, physical,
mental, or moral, is never secured save as the food is adapted to the
organism. And just as much care as our scientific dietitians give to our
dining-room service, our university instructors should give to the
mental and moral pabulum that they serve to their students, especially
the lower classes if not the entire body of undergraduates. They shou