Mat 19, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



527 



summer-playing bugaboo, so that the more seri- 

 ous issues are obscured. 



Visualize, if you will, the college teacher, — 

 instructor, professor, department head or 

 dean, — ^making his final summary of grades for 

 the members of his classes or sending in his 

 mid-semester reports of delinquencies. Ima- 

 gine that you see the name of one of these star 

 athletes upon the list of those who have been 

 found wanting. No very vivid imagination is 

 required to complete the picture. It is quite 

 likely that many of our teachers are upright 

 enough and strong enough to resist the pres- 

 sure which will result. Also it is quite possible 

 that many are not so strong. This is particu- 

 larly true of the teachers who hold the more 

 subordinate positions and who feel themselves 

 less secure in their standing. And the assault 

 against class standards is not, by any means, 

 confined to actual threats against individual 

 instructors. A more subtle influence in the 

 form of a very human and a very universal 

 desire for personal popularity and a lurking 

 fear of loss of dearly earned prestige finally 

 leads to the same result. As individuals and 

 as faculties we feel more and more strongly a 

 timidity in the enforcement of rules, — not only 

 rules of scholarship but rules of every descrip- 

 tion. This, I am firmly convinced, is the basic 

 cause for the now too obvious drift of our 

 colleges toward laxness in morale and toward 

 the lowering of the standards of work required 

 of those who are to receive our degrees. The 

 futility of our most earnest efforts toward 

 inspiring and effective teaching becomes 

 increasingly apparent. 



Fellow chemists, this is a problem which 

 affects all of us most vitally. We have had an 

 enormous amount of publicity for the fact that 

 American science was not, before the war, able 

 to cope with German science and various rea- 

 sons have been assigned for this undoubted 

 fact. The eificiency of American science was 

 suddenly increased, during our war period, by 

 the spur of life-and-death necessity. But this 

 spur no longer exists and if our chemistry, — 

 research, applied or teaching, — is to continue 

 to hold its own we must see to it that our 

 young college graduates go forth into the 

 struggle fully equipped with well trained minds 



and hands, — well trained not only in the ability 

 to do certain routine tasks that we have set for 

 them in the colleges and universities, or in the 

 ability to follow slavishly in the methods and 

 habits of thought of their teachers, but broadly 

 trained in scientific fundamentals, in general 

 culture and in the ability to do independent 

 and profound thinking on important matters 

 of science and of life. This they do not now 

 acquire as they could and as they should. 



Whether or not you may agree with the con- 

 clusions I am about to draw, I do not believe 

 that the essential facts as I have already stated 

 them can successfully be denied. I do not be- 

 lieve that we can make any very great head- 

 way in our effort to stop the obvious decline 

 in our standards of scientific education until 

 we can succeed in limiting the distractions of 

 campus activities to sane and reasonable values. 

 We can not bring about this change until we 

 divorce the educational sj'stem from the 

 present commercialized system of intercolle- 

 giate athletics. And, finally, the incubus of 

 commercialized athletics can not be shaken off 

 until we throw out of our educational system 

 all of our extravagantly paid professional 

 coaches. For a fraction of a year of work we 

 pay a football coach three or four times as 

 much as an able and experienced professor in 

 any other department will receive. We need 

 not feel any surprise when we discover that he 

 has done the best he could to earn this salary 

 and thus to insure permanency in his position, 

 or that he has employed every means in his 

 Ijower to obtain the best material for his teams, 

 rules or no rules, and we need not expect that 

 anything short of constant vigilance will serve 

 to curb his extra-legal activities. His job is to 

 develop a team that will be able to outplay the 

 teams of approximately seven other colleges 

 in as many contests of approximately forty 

 minutes each, per season. He is going to do 

 this to the best of his ability, regardless of 

 cost, and we may think as we please about it. 



Our colleges are spending relatively enor- 

 mous sums upon athletic activities whose end 

 is not, in any sense, physical development of 

 the students but solely the winning of games 

 and championships, while the educational needs 

 are grievously suffering, through lack of sup- 



