The relations of the medical profession to modern education : an address delivered at the commencement of the Medical Department of the University of Vermont, June 16, 1869 / by Edward S. Dunster.

  • Dunster, Edward S. (Edward Swift), 1834-1888.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The relations of the medical profession to modern education : an address delivered at the commencement of the Medical Department of the University of Vermont, June 16, 1869 / by Edward S. Dunster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    II. These great facts, which have been long familiar to careful observers and cautious thinkers, are now clearly perceived by all peoples, and the consecpience has been a growing dissatis- faction with the traditional systems of education, and a demand for a culture which shall distinctly recognize this material element in a nation’s progress, shall take into account the changed conditions of modern life, and shape the growing mind into harmony with them. This dissatisfaction has at length organized itself into open revolt, and the whole educa- tional system, from top to bottom, is under arraignment. Our colleges and higher grades of educational institutions are in- dicted as clinging to an outworn cmTiculum, whose only effect is to overload their graduates with a mass of antiquated lore, which, while it may fit a man for the occupation of a gentle- man, does not contribute largely to his usefulness as a member of society—does not even qualify him for the ordinary avocations of life. The lower grades of schools are charged with adapting their studies simply to meet the demands made upon them by the higlier, acting as it were as feeders to these last. This in- fluence extends even to the lowest and most primary of our schools, whose elementary instruction, it is claimed, loses sight of the great principle, which should constantly be kept in view, of training the young to meet and grapple with the realities and responsibilities of life. In short, the entire existing systems of education are declared unsatisfactory and inadequate so far as concerns the fitting of man for action, and action implies labor, and labor by divine command is ordained as tlie great and-on?y essential condition of life. This cry for reform is already producing its results, and a reaction has commenced which threatens to entirely subvert the old method of education, and possibly even to lose sight of the real value of the old studies, and so produce injurious re- sults by giving a discipline and a culture as one-sided and un- syminetrical as was the old. The evidences of the new order of things are seen on every side. In our colleges, not only has the curriculum been remodelled, allowing a wide election in the mathematics, pure and the classics, but supplementary depart