GOING TO COLLEGE 上大学.docVIP

Going to College H. L. Mencken [1] Up to a few years ago there was nothing more generally believed in the United States than that education, and especially education of the so-called higher variety, was a valuable thing, and worth any sacrifice of time and money. The notion had emanated, originally, from the Puritans of New England, who cherished it as they cherished their romantic belief in hot and eternal hell. With the passage of the year it had permeated the whole country, and only a few forlorn iconoclasts challenged it. The study of books, it appeared, could transform any plowboy into a Lincoln, and, what was even more wonderful and alluring, into a successful dealer in high grade investment securities. After the late war, with money flowing freely, all the yokels of the land began sending their progeny to college. [2] The result was a great congestion in the halls of learning, and that congestion still continues. In some of the state universities there are so many students that merely keeping track of them enlists the services of whole hordes of bookkeepers, top sergeants, policemen, and adding machines. They cram the classrooms to suffocation, make the adjacent bootlegger rich, and drive the sweating professors frantic. There are not enough competent teachers in the country to handle them, and so a great many unprepared aspirants have had to be called in to help. These aspirants, I daresay, do the best they can, but certainly it is not much. While they are learning their trade, their pupils are learning nothing. [3] Some of the latter, more earnest than the average, now begin to protest. They complain that their time is wasted by pedagogical ignoramuses. In some colleges they published stenographic reports of the lectures they are forced to listen to, seeking to show the world what bilge is in them. In others they denounce the faculty in their campus papers, and so get themselves expelled. Everywhere there seems to be a rising doubt about the efficacy and ut