ADDRESSES OF WELCOME. 7 
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he mornings of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week, repre- 
sent, In equal proportions, the new and the old ; one half devoted to 
anderstanding and explaining what is already established and in vogue, 
the other half devoted to showing the claims of what is new, and urging 
its adoption into the school system. The educational problems are all to 
se discussed, if wisely discussed, in the light of these two sides or tend- 
oncies. The committees on programmes have kept this in view. 
fn the department of higher education the distinction between the 
college and the university is brought prominently forward, and the rela- 
ion of a course of study such as the old college furnished ; namely, for 
liscipline, and for giving the student a survey of the whole field of 
human learning—the relation of this to the specialization of the activities 
of the student in lines of original research. One party in higher educa- 
tion will contend that the old college course should be retained, and held 
to its purpose of giving unity and consistency to the knowledge of the 
student before he enters on his specialties, whether law, medicine, divinity, 
or some special branch of science or art ; the other party will contend for 
a policy that discounts the so-called liberal education, and the boasted 
advantages of a prolonged study of the classical languages and pure 
mathematics, and contend for the earlier introduction of specialization. 
The department congress of technology has prepared for itself a 
nighly valuable series of discussions on the educational value of such 
branches as workshop practice, laboratory work in exact measurement, in 
chemistry, in electricity ; what the student gets from mechanical and 
architectural drawing, and from pure and applied mathematics; what 
from. natural science, and what from his training for an engineer. These 
studies in educational values have a direct bearing on the most funda- 
mental question of higher education—the question whether the course of 
study in our colleges merits the high claims made for it as being one of 
a specially high educational value; as being, in fact, the course that 
enlightens the student, and gives him balance of mind and a judicial habit 
of thought. 
To this great question in higher education, also, the congress of second- 
ary education contributes its quota by setting in the foreground questions 
of the practical value of science as an educative study as compared with 
language, and, furthermore, the value of the modern languages as com- 
pared with Latin and Greek. 
This question of the educational value of the classic and modern studies, 
of the languages versus the sciences and mathematics, is not a local one 
of interest only to our people, but a question more and more coming to 
the front in France and England, and even in Germany; and we are for- 
unate in having with us distinguished delegates from all those countries 
who have weighty words to say in its discussion. 
A kindred question occupies a portion of the programme of the congress