Mabch 5, 



SCIENCE 



371 



ship is made possible by traditional policies, gen- 

 eralship by military institutions, great financiers 

 by established commerce. 



To the same effect, President Pritehett 

 has lately said, speaking of education: 



Organization which is wise, which respects fun- 

 damental tendencies and forces, which separates 

 incongruous phases of activity, may not only add 

 to the efficiency of educational effort, but may 

 offer a larger measure of freedom than can be 

 hoped for in chaotic and unrelated efforts to ac- 

 complish the same ends. 



Even in the home of academic freedom 

 the force of these words can be illustrated. 

 For the honor degrees at Harvard are con- 

 ferred only after the completion of certain 

 correlated and combined courses, selected 

 for, not ly, the student. Does not this 

 fact plainly indicate that where serious- 

 ness begins, there some form of enforced 

 coordination begins also? 



The objection to negative freedom does 

 not, however, drive us back to positive, but 

 arbitrary restriction. Still less can the 

 difficulty be met by the illogical Tale- 

 Princeton compromise^ according to which 

 the student gets practically two years of 

 each— the freshman and sophomore years 

 devoted to conventional restrictions, the 

 junior and senior years to negative free- 

 dom, qualified though it is by the inevi- 

 table mechanical inconveniences of the 

 time-table and a few departmental se- 

 quences. In considering only the two al- 

 ternatives here in question or their com- 

 bination in equal consecutive parts, the 

 colleges overlook altogether the organic 

 character of a genuine educational solu- 

 tion. 



I should like briefly to touch another es- 

 sential point. It is absolutely futile to 

 talk of adjusting to life an institution of 

 such easy virtue as our present college. 

 Perhaps its demoralization of standards 

 simply expresses the fact that, as it serves 

 no particular educational purpose, it is 

 immaterial whether the student takes the 



thing seriously or not. But a college or- 

 ganized on the lines I have suggested has 

 no other choice but seriousness. We still 

 bear traces of our English collegiate origin 

 in the familiar twaddle about the college 

 as a sort of gentlemen factory— a gentle- 

 man being a youth free of the suspicion 

 of thoroughness or definite purpose. Now, 

 I grant that as long as a single required 

 course was forced upon every student, it 

 would have been absurd to require the 

 same sort of performance of every one. 

 The prospective don could fairly be held 

 to a standard not applicable to the future 

 country squire. But the elective system 

 — organized or unorganized — knocks the 

 props from under the gentleman, or citizen 

 —as he is sometimes called. It proposes 

 to do for each student what he needs. It 

 is thus illogical not to require a high grade 

 of excellence of all alike. Ineffective per- 

 formance can no longer be excused on the 

 ground of the irrelevancy of the task. 

 The tolerant attitude of the college towards 

 every form of individual capacity and 

 social opportunity compels a serious treat- 

 ment on both individual and social 

 grounds. 



The fact that , the college has so fre- 

 quently demoralized rather than stimu- 

 lated occasionally leads men who have been 

 developed by the struggle for opportunity 

 to look upon mere abundance of opportu- 

 nity as itself disastrous. Our strong man 

 of the last generation had to fight for his 

 chance; and that was the making of him. 

 A costly discipline, to be sure, but not 

 altogether a bad one. To-day, far better 

 opportunities than he fought for are easy 

 and accessible. The struggle of our chil- 

 dren must then be not for opportunities, 

 but within them. The college offers the 

 chance, it makes every concession to indi- 

 vidual capacity and disposition. It must 

 demand, therefore, a genuine performance 

 at every point. To make opportunities 



