The lectures which I was invited to deliver
last winter before a private class met with such an enthusiastic reception
as to set me thinking very seriously of the evident delight
with which grown people found themselves receiving systematic instruction
in a definite study. This again put me upon reviewing
the whole business of Lecturing which has risen to such proportions
in our country, but which, every one must feel, has now reached its climax
and must soon give way -- like all things -- to something better.
The fault of the lecture system as at present conducted -- a fault
which must finally prove fatal to it -- is that it is too fragmentary,
and presents too fragmentary a mass -- `indigesta moles' -- of facts
before the hearers. Now if, instead of such a series
as that of the popular Star Course (for instance) in Philadelphia,
a scheme of lectures should be arranged which would amount to
the SYSTEMATIC PRESENTATION of a GIVEN SUBJECT, then the audience
would receive a substantial benefit, and would carry away
some genuine possession at the end of the course. The subject
thus systematically presented might be either scientific
(as Botany, for example, or Biology popularized, and the like) or domestic
(as detailed in the accompanying printed extract under the "Household" School)
or artistic or literary.
This stage of the investigation put me to thinking of schools
for grown people. Men and women leave college nowadays
just at the time when they are really prepared to study with effect.
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