American educationalist, the son of Samuel Atkins Eliot (1798–1862), mayor of Boston, representative in Congress, and in 1842–1853 treasurer of Harvard; born in Boston on the 20th of March 1834. He graduated in 1853 at Harvard College, where he was successively tutor (1854–1858) and assistant professor of chemistry (1858–1863). He studied chemistry and foreign educational methods in Europe in 1863–1865, was professor of analytical chemistry in the newly established Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1865–1869), although absent fourteen months in Europe in 1867–1868; and in 1869 was elected president of Harvard University, a choice remarkable at once for his youth and his being a layman and scientist. With Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, in his presidency, led in the work of efficient graduate schools. Its elective system, which has spread far, although not originated by President Eliot, was thoroughly established by him, and is only one of many radical changes which he championed with great success. The raising of entrance requirements, which led to a corresponding raising of the standards of secondary schools, and the introduction of an element of choice in these entrance requirements, which allowed a limited election of studies to secondary pupils, became national tendencies primarily through President Eliot’s potent influence. As chairman of a national Committee of Ten (1890) on secondary school studies, he urged the abandonment of brief disconnected “information” courses, the correlation of subjects taught, the equal rank in college requirements of subjects in which equal time, consecutiveness and concentration were demanded, and a more thorough study of English composition; and to a large degree he secured national sanction for these reforms and their working out by experts into a practicable and applicable system. He laboured to unify the entire educational system, minimize prescription, cast out monotony, and introduce freedom and enthusiasm; and he emphasized the need of special training for special work. He was first to suggest (1894) cooperation by colleges in holding common entrance examinations throughout the country, and it was largely through his efforts that standards were so approximated that this became possible. He contended that secondary schools maintained by public funds should shape their courses for the benefit of students whose education goes no further than such high schools, and not be mere training schools for the universities. His success as administrator and man of affairs and as an educational reformer made him one of the great figures of his time, in whose opinions on any topic the deepest interest was felt throughout the country. In November 1908 he resigned the presidency of Harvard, and retired from the position early in 1909, when he was succeeded by Professor Abbott Lawrence Lowell. In December 1908 he was elected president of the National Civil Service Reform League. He was offered the post of ambassador to England by President Taft in 1909, but preferred to serve his country in a private capacity at home. The same position was tendered him in 1913 by President Wilson and again declined. He continued to take an active part, by writing and speaking, on all the important public questions of the day. His theories as to needed changes in education toward the concrete and practical had great influence upon American schools. The vocational movement, so marked after 1910, was without doubt accelerated by his continued insistence upon the training of the senses of sight, hearing and touch, as being the sources of the best part of knowledge. In 1914 he was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In his educational writings he maintained that the traditional systems had dealt too exclusively with language and literature. In 1916, however, he was awarded a gold medal by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his literary influence in his educational work. In the field of religion he was an authoritative spokesman on the Unitarian faith. In his later books, The Religion of the Future and Twentieth Century Christianity, he rejected obscure dogma, emphasized freedom in place of authority, and held that the teaching of Jesus had been “the undying root of all the best in human history since He lived,” and that He would be the supreme teacher in the new religion, the outcome of which would be the brotherhood of man. Dr. Eliot gave much attention to labour problems and declared that “profit-sharing, combined with cooperative management, in which the employees take active and reasonable part, with cooperative care of health, education and happiness of employees, and with full knowledge by employees of the employers’ account, is the only road to industrial peace.” He condemned limited output by labour as well as uniform hours and wages. The settling of industrial strife he considered the next important thing after the establishment of a league of nations. He was a strong supporter of President Wilson’s administration, and approved his personal appeal to the country in 1918 to return a Democratic Congress. He favoured prohibition as a war measure, and later as an amendment to the Constitution. He wrote in favour of military training after the Swiss method, but maintained that, after a league of nations was formed, no country should be allowed to have an army “whose officers have entered for life the profession of soldier.” In 1920 he was an active worker for the Democratic party because he regarded the immediate adoption of the Covenant of the League of Nations as a moral obligation.
His writings include The Happy Life (1896); Five American Contributions to Civilization, and Other Essays and Addresses (1897); Educational Reform, Essays and Addresses 1869–1897 (1898); More Money for the Public Schools (1903); Four American Leaders (1906), chapters on Franklin, Washington, Channing and Emerson; University Administration (1908); and with F. H. Storer, a Compendious Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis (Boston, 1869; many times reissued and revised). His annual reports as President of Harvard were notable contributions to the literature of education in America, and he delivered numerous public addresses, many of which have been reprinted. He was the author of The Conflict Between Individualism and Collectivism in a Democracy (1910, lectures delivered at the university of Virginia); Some Roads Towards Peace (1914) and numerous articles on educational, religious, political and social questions. He edited The Harvard Classics.
See “President Eliot’s Administration,” by different hands, a summary of his work at Harvard in 1869–1894, in The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, vol. 2, pp. 449–504 (Boston, MA, 1894); and E. Kuhnemann, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard (Boston, 1909). (See authored article: Asa Gray.)
