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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 770 



irreverent speech, such a phase is com- 

 monly called a fad. 



The most of our so-called educational 

 fads are at least half true. We believe in 

 them with all our hearts until they run 

 into their inevitable exaggerations. All of 

 us here to-day undoiibtedly believe in the 

 elective system, and we can never go back 

 to the educational views and practises 

 which that system has displaced. But we 

 recognize the fact that it embodies some- 

 what less than the whole truth regarding 

 an educational curriculum. In other 

 words the utter disorganization of studies 

 can not be taken as the final stage in the 

 history of studies. It is rather a whole- 

 some and necessary preliminary to a better 

 and more humane organization. 



It is a significant fact that, just at the 

 time when the elective system is attaining 

 its widest acceptance and our scholastic 

 individualism is reaching its utmost limit 

 in the studies of collegiate students, a new 

 movement toward institutional coherence 

 is setting in among our schools and uni- 

 versities. The first decade of the twentieth 

 century seems destined to be a turning 

 point in the history of common educational 

 standard-^ in this country. I should like to 

 point out some of the characteristic fea- 

 tures of this new movement, and to show 

 that it can not stop short of becoming a 

 world-movement. 



It is fair to say that we have not been 

 without standards in our earlier educa- 

 tional history, however vague and inade- 

 quate those standards may have been. The 

 most definite and appreciable mark of 

 scholastic competence which we have had 

 within our own borders has been the de- 

 gree of bachelor of arts, as conferred by 

 our better colleges. The four-year course 

 of these colleges has represented our con- 

 ception of the measure of liberal culture 

 attainable by any considerable number of 



our citizens, and the entrance requirements 

 of these same colleges has been our norm 

 for secondary education. 



Such a standard, informally accepted by 

 the country at large, might serve the pur- 

 pose reasonably well while we were getting 

 our systems of elementary and higher edu- 

 cation for the first time into working order. 

 Its inadequacies became manifest when we 

 deliberately set about combining higher 

 education and elementary education into 

 one national and democratic system. And 

 those inadequacies were accentuated when 

 we found ourselves deliberately combining 

 general education with special education, 

 the liberal with the vocational, to provide 

 a full-orbed preparation for the life of our 

 time. 



There were many ways in which such 

 inadequacy appeared. One of the most 

 baffling elements in the situation was found 

 in the fact that our ready-made system 

 provided no method for determining what 

 were the really standard colleges. Har- 

 vard and Yale were the names that came 

 most readily to the lips. But common re- 

 port could not be deemed sufficient to de- 

 cide the question when the actual and 

 tangible interests of other widely scattered 

 institutions and of their alumni were at 

 stake. Even if Harvard and Yale were 

 accepted without question as embodying the 

 American standard, there was no obvious 

 and adequate procedure by which other 

 institutions could be measured up against 

 them. And Harvard and Yale had differ- 

 ences of their own. 



Some of the first steps toward the defi- 

 nition of a standard other than that of a 

 single institution were taken by certain 

 states, in the prescription of conditions 

 governing the incorporation of colleges. 

 Inasmuch as the power to grant academic 

 degrees is by common consent in this 

 country a power derived directly from the 



