796 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 856 



An elaborate examination of school pro- 

 grams from good schools in different parts 

 of the country recently made at Harvard 

 has fully convinced us that the complaints 

 of the schoolmasters in this matter are 

 justified. If it be urged that the examina- 

 tions can now be spread over three years, 

 it is to be observed that the college exami- 

 nations are necessarily adapted to the stage 

 of maturity of boys nearly ready to enter 

 college, and are, consequently, for the 

 most part out of the range of a boy com- 

 pleting the second year of his high-school 

 course. 



5. Under the present system of entrance 

 to Harvard College, not only is the course 

 of study in the schools fixed from above, 

 but also the methods of teaching have been 

 dictated by the college. This has taken 

 from the schools freedom to experiment 

 with their own methods of education, a 

 freedom which able and enterprising 

 teachers crave, and ought to have. A 

 certain relief, it must be said, has been 

 found here in the examinations of the Col- 

 lege Examination Board, but it appears to 

 be only a partial one. 



6. One further bad result upon the 

 schools more directly under the influence 

 of Harvard should be mentioned. The ex- 

 amination system has enfeebled their power 

 to take responsibility for the quality of 

 their own product. As Harvard has 

 undertaken to test every subject studied 

 in the school course, the school has been 

 responsible for meeting these tests, not for 

 maintaining its own ideal and type of edu- 

 cation. Indeed, it was hardly open to it to 

 form its own educational ideal or specific 

 type at all. 



These various incidental bad results of 

 the present system have led the Harvard 

 faculty to a complete reconsideration of 



the principles which ought to govern a 

 plan of entrance requirements, and to the 

 adoption of a new system which, for the 

 present, will be maintained side by side 

 with the old system, the applicant having 

 his choice whether he will come up for ad- 

 mission under one or the other plan. 



In framing the new system the consid- 

 eration chiefly in mind has been that en- 

 trance requirements must always test two 

 things : 



1. Whether the applicant has had an 

 adequate school course. Inasmuch as a 

 bachelor's degree represents the comple- 

 tion of the whole course of liberal educa- 

 tion, it necesarily includes a guarantee that 

 the earlier as well as the later part of the 

 student's education has been adequate in 

 range and intensity. The college is respon- 

 sible not merely for college work, but also 

 for knowing whether the school work has 

 been devoted to such subjects as, in its 

 opinion, may properly form a part of the 

 education finally attested by the bachelor 's 

 degree. 



2. What result has been accomplished 

 by such a course of school study in de- 

 veloping effective ability in the individual 

 boy or girl. This latter test has for its ob- 

 ject to determine whether the applicant is 

 likely to be able to do college work well. 



Now these two ends for which college en- 

 trance requirements exist are entirely dif- 

 ferent in nature. The character of the 

 applicant's course of study is a very dif- 

 ferent thing from the practical result in the 

 boy as he stands. The former can be ade- 

 quately ascertained by proper inquiry and 

 by inspection of the school course he has 

 actually pursued; the latter can only be 

 determined by recitations, examinations, 

 or some similar test, conducted either by 

 the school or the college. The present ex- 

 amination system undertakes to reach both 

 these ends by one instrument — a system of 



