The Pursuit of Knowledge by Stephen Leacock

What has been said incidentally leads me at once to another topic of this discussion. I refer to the fact that our modern college education has developed into being very largely a qualification for entrance into something else,--not immediately connected with it. It has taken on, in the evolution of four centuries, the form of a statutory, legal qualification for entry into a profession. It thus becomes one of the necessary steps towards earning money, making one's living. This is all very well where the thing studied and the thing practiced are one and the same. It is clear that to be a lawyer one must study law, that to be a doctor one must learn anatomy, and that to be a clergyman one must read the Bible, and to be a teacher one should study teaching. But it is a little harder to see why a dentist has to study algebra, or a veterinary surgeon read Shakespeare,--except, perhaps, the play of Richard III--"a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

In the college where I teach there are young men studying political economy because they want to be surgeons, studying poetry in order to qualify for the navy, and trigonometry in order to get into the Church. Only by resort to the artistic valuation of background can such studies seemingly be justified.