Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

I cannot defend my lectures,—they are prone to be clumsy and hurried botches,— still less answer for any report,—which I never dare read; but I can tell you the amount of my chiding. I vented some of the old grudge I owe the college now for forty-five years, for the cruel waste of two years of college time on mathematics without any attempt to adapt, by skillful tutors, or by private instruction, these tasks to the capacity of slow learners. I still remember the useless pains I took, and my serious recourse to my tutor for aid which he did not know how to give me. And now I see to-day the same indiscriminate imposing of mathematics on all students during two years,—ear or no ear, you shall all learn music,—to the waste of time and health of a large part of every class. It is both natural and laudable in each professor to magnify his department, and to seek to make it the first in the world if he can. But of course this tendency must be corrected by securing in the constitution of the college a power in the head (whether singular or plural) of coordinating all the parts. Else, important departments will be overlaid, as in Oxford and in Harvard, natural history was until now. Now, it looks as if natural history would obtain