Note 573 — Chapter XI · Prescribed Courses or Elective Studies?

Atlantic Monthly, May 1900, pp. 665–666.—To judge from numberless comments in newspapers and magazines, Prof. Münsterberg’s article seems to have caused a great stir, as coming from one of the most prominent Professors of Harvard, the centre of the movement towards electivism. The New York Nation, on May 17, page 379, said as follows: “If Professor Münsterberg’s article on ‘School Reform’ in the Atlantic cannot be answered effectively, something is radically wrong with our scheme of education.” Various attempts were made to answer the Professor’s indictments of the elective system, v. g. in the Educational Review, June and September 1900. But the answers were anything but effective. The Nation had said, “what we are most curious to know is what they think about it at Harvard.” A Graduate Student wrote soon after from Harvard: “I wish to call attention to a result of the elective system which he [Prof. Münsterberg] has not mentioned, and which might even strengthen his argument—a result most disgraceful, yet most common, and whose truth cannot be ignored. I refer to the undisguised custom of electing ‘snap courses,’—courses in which, for various reasons, good marks can be made without much work. For the desire for honors, and the fear of being thought a ‘dig’, are two very potent factors in determining a choice.” (Nation, May 24, p. 396.) This statement is not at all surprising; it confirms what intelligent men had expected from such a system.