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Jan. 17th, 2006 11:36 amAn interesting extract from the Harvard University annual report for the 1862 academic year. I just goes to show that the favorite line, "its all the parents fault" goes back pretty far...
"The discipline of the College during the year was, as the undersigned is assured, as good as in the preceding year. That there should be some immorality and misbehavior among a body of eight hundred young men gathered about a University, is to be expected; but after a year's observation, the President is convinced that the reports of evil among them are frequently exaggerated, and that the amount of sterling worth and steadfast fidelity is seldom reported.
The passage of horse-cars to and from Boston, nearly, if not quite, a hundred times a day, has rendered it practically impossible for the Government of the College to prevent our young men from being exposed to all the temptations of the city. The only practicable remedy lies with the parents, and with the teachers of the preparatory schools; it is to develop in the youth, before he comes here, such habits of moral strength and independence, that he may be able to stand and walk alone. The exposures in College do not create, but only reveal, the weakness or the corruption which was already in the boy at his entrance here. A young man at the age of seventeen years, if he have any real moral strength in him, is too mature to be easily led astray; and if at that age he appears to fall away, it only shows, in general, that he had hitherto not been trained, but only constrained, in the way in which he should go."
THIRTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE TO THE OVERSEERS, EXHIBITING THE STATE OF THE INSTITUTION FOR THE ACADEMICAL YEAR 1862-63. pp. 13-14
"The discipline of the College during the year was, as the undersigned is assured, as good as in the preceding year. That there should be some immorality and misbehavior among a body of eight hundred young men gathered about a University, is to be expected; but after a year's observation, the President is convinced that the reports of evil among them are frequently exaggerated, and that the amount of sterling worth and steadfast fidelity is seldom reported.
The passage of horse-cars to and from Boston, nearly, if not quite, a hundred times a day, has rendered it practically impossible for the Government of the College to prevent our young men from being exposed to all the temptations of the city. The only practicable remedy lies with the parents, and with the teachers of the preparatory schools; it is to develop in the youth, before he comes here, such habits of moral strength and independence, that he may be able to stand and walk alone. The exposures in College do not create, but only reveal, the weakness or the corruption which was already in the boy at his entrance here. A young man at the age of seventeen years, if he have any real moral strength in him, is too mature to be easily led astray; and if at that age he appears to fall away, it only shows, in general, that he had hitherto not been trained, but only constrained, in the way in which he should go."
THIRTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE TO THE OVERSEERS, EXHIBITING THE STATE OF THE INSTITUTION FOR THE ACADEMICAL YEAR 1862-63. pp. 13-14
