834 
“A clear distinction im kind between the first-year 
studies of a university in any faculty and the upper- 
form studies of a school is a fundamental principle of 
education. A school year should, therefore, in no case 
be reckoned as the equivalent of a university year, and 
the practice of allowing pupils to present themselves 
for a university examination, beyond the matriculation, 
before or upon entrance to a university is to be 
deprecated as confusing the educational functions of 
school and university and leading to an inappropriate 
type of teaching at both.” 
In the best secondary schools the science work is 
really on as high a plane in every respect as that done 
in the first year at some of the universities, and the staffs 
are just as well qualified. Pupils from such schools 
should be able to obtain exemption from the whole of 
the Intermediate examination : in other cases partial 
exemption is valuable as minimising the university 
student’s pre-occupation with the business of preparing 
for examination. But the introduction of advanced 
courses in secondary schools ought not to be allowed 
to obscure the principle that work in those schools 
should be based on the mastery of fundamentals. 
As to the results of neglecting this principle, a useful 
lesson may be learnt from the recent history of 
education in the United States, as interpreted by the 
president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance- 
ment of Teaching in his report for 1921-22. This indi- 
cates such confusion of aims and principles and, in con- 
sequence, waste, that by correlation and simplification 
of curricula the normal aggregate duration of studies in 
the elementary and secondary schools and the college 
of liberal arts could be reduced with great advantage | 
to all concerned from 16 years to 12. 
The typical American secondary school, known as 
the high school, was formerly called the “ People’s 
' College,’ and gave an intellectual training quite com- 
parable with that provided in the authentic college, 
which was itself little more than a secondary school. 
The courses were on parallel lines and were such as 
were deemed suitable respectively for pupils destined 
for trade and industrial occupations and for those who 
would enter the learned professions. From being 
parallel the high school by degrees became anterior to 
the college course. Hypnotised on one hand by the 
social prestige of the college for which it came to serve 
as a vestibule, and driven, on the other, to cater for 
the needs of pupils who ought to have been in trade 
schools, the high school became involved in an attempt 
to teach something of everything from typewriting to 
psychology. Meanwhile the colleges, although assuming 
some of the functions of the university, continued to 
give during the first two years of the college course 
what was really secondary education. Surveying the 
situation with special reference to the rate of increase, 
NO. 2799, VOL. 111 ] 
NATURE 



[JUNE 23, 1923 
lately accelerated in the cost of education, the report 
deplores the results of the so-called enrichment of the 
secondary school curriculum : 
““The high school of to-day has been transformed 
from a distinctively intellectual agency into one that 
offers instruction concerning every field of human 
knowledge, and assumes to provide training for every 
vocation and profession. . . . In the process the notions 
of sincerity and thoroughness in education have been 
displaced. . . . The striking characteristic of our schools 
under the process of enrichment of the curriculum is 
superficiality. . . . The total result is to present educa- 
tion and to present technical training as ends to be 
gained by superficial means. It would be difficult to 
find a graduate of our undergraduate colleges who 
knows his native language, who has read the books, 
or who has done the thinking, of the youth of eighteen 
who graduates from a German gymnasium, from a 
French Lycée, or from an English Public School like 
Eton or Harrow. .. . He knows almost nothing of 
intellectual discipline, and is neither able nor in the 
mood to bend himself heartily and effectively to a 
sharp intellectual task.” 
It is interesting to compare with this the notes 
written eighteen years ago by Mr. A. C. Benson, after 
twenty years’ experience of teaching at Eton, on the 
system then prevalent in ne secondary schools 
and colleges : 
“We send out so many boys not only without 
intellectual life, but not even capable of humble use- 
fulness . . . they have not had time to read any 
English to speak of . . . I would raise the standards 
of simple education, and force boys to show that they 
are working honestly . . . a few subjects thoroughly 
taught are infinitely better than a large number of 
subjects flabbily taught. . . . It is difficult to imagine 
a condition of greater vacuity than that in which a 
man leaves the university after taking a pass degree. 
. . . The education is of a contemptible, smattering 
kind ; it is really no education at all. It gives no 
grip, or vigour or stimulus.” 
Since then this critic’s conception of the principles 
and aims of secondary education have been widely 
adopted, and it is owing to the consequent improvement 
of British secondary school teaching that it can so well 
bear comparison with the American system, which seems 
to be now afflicted with some of the former vices of the 
British. But it would bea mistake to assume that these 
vices have been eradicated completely and for ever from 
the British system. They have their roots in human 
nature, and we must be on the alert to detect their 
revival. It is certain that attempts to give effect to the 
recent recommendation of the Consultative Committee 
of the Board of Education that a more prominent place 
in the ordinary curriculum should be assigned to zsthetic 
subjects will entail conditions favourable to precisely 
that illusive “enrichment” of the curriculum which 
has had such unfortunate results in America. - The 
