the needs of the great majority who must finish their education with the high school. Today, the demands of industrial and civic life, and the rapid increase in attendance, which numbers more and more pupils from the homes of the workers, have so greatly decreased the percentage of those who can go to college that most of the pupils must be trained for commercial and industrial pursuits. This has lead many people to question the value of certain subjects which are now taught, and to insist that others be substituted or added which are related to life and its work. In their opinions, the education and training of the high schools should possess sufficient elements of vocational value to enable graduates to go at once into the occupations of life and become, at the earliest moment possible, the successful producers, manufacturers, transporters, and public officials of a community. They say that high schools exist, primarily, to make good, efficient, well-educated citizens who will prove worthy, in positions of trust and of responsibility, of any expense incurred in their education, no matter how great the sum. They believe that the amount and kind of preparatory work undertaken by a school should vary with the capacity of the students and the ability of the school, and should not be influenced by the dictation or the desire of any college. They maintain that the first duty of the school is to prepare pupils for life, that preparation for life is good enough for college, and that every graduate who has satisfactorily completed a four years' course, should be permitted to take any college course for which he shows ability, and which will fit him for larger spheres of influence and usefulness. They refuse to understand why graduates with commercial tastes, or desires for industrial work, cannot readily find some way to enter colleges where they may pursue advanced work along similar lines; and today, they are beginning to insist that either the colleges receiving state aid or new ones established by the state, shall accept those graduates who have done good high school work, but who are forced, at present, to go to work because they have not been prepared along certain special or narrow lines fixed by college authorities.

What should constitute preparation for college should not be a matter for attack on the part of the school, and defense on the part of the college, nor should it be an attempt on the part of

the college to get all it can at the expense of secondary education by forcing schools to yield to demands which teachers know and protest are too great. Already, both agree that the high school is the school of the people which must educate the majority who do not go to college as well as serve the interests of the minority who do go, that both are seeking the same end, that both are striving to attain to the same ideals, that both are under similar obligations to society and that each must stimulate, improve and enlighten young men and women preparing for efficient service in this great industrial democracy. For these reasons, the college and high school authorities must get together, consider their common problem with the utmost openness of mind, and solve it by mutual concessions.

There is no reason why education should not be a continuous process from the first day of school until the highest degree of the university is awarded; nor why the transition from the high school to the college should not be made as easy as possible, because properly adjusted entrance requirements tend to produce students who are better equipped physically and mentally to do the work that awaits them. To bring about such a condition, it may be necessary for the college to change its point of view in several respects. For example, all subjects studied in the high school may have to be changed to others at the time of entrance to college, subjects taken up in college may not always lead directly from those pursued in the high school, methods of instruction used in the high school may have to be continued for one or more years in college, or qualifying for a degree may have to be deferred from entrance to the second or third years of the college course. If such changes will produce better preparation in the high school and serve the interests of all pupils more efficiently, then it will be wise for the colleges to make such adjustment at once, that their students may enjoy the benefits of the best preparation possible and that the number of young people who are seeking and finding a college education may be increased.

At the present time, most college professors have had little or no experience in teaching or studying children of high school age and so are unable to sympathize with teachers who must meet the problems of immaturity, of adolescence, and of limited capacity for difficult work during the earlier years of the course.

They judge the ability of secondary students by the ability displayed by students of the freshman year, not knowing that high school pupils pass through the period of greatest physical change during the years from fourteen to sixteen, and that rapid physical growth leaves little energy and power, in most cases, for hard mental work. In other words, pupils enter the high school as children and graduate as young men and women, passing, during the four years, from a minimum of intellectual power to a capacity for work, approaching closely to their maximum. This makes it necessary to crowd the larger part of college preparation into the last two years, resulting in too many subjects at the same time, too much ground to be covered in each subject, and too much work for proper assimilation. This condition is further due to the fact that college men are specialists searching for unknown bits of knowledge, attempting to preserve high standards of scholarship, interested in subjects rather than in students, and forgetful that scholars are rarely found elsewhere than on college faculties. Lacking experience with the conditions in large schools and with the ability of high school pupils, and failing to take into consideration the demands of other departments, they forget their obligations to young students and fix entrance requirements so high that they lose many opportunities to inspire youth with a desire for higher learning and to turn their own knowledge into active energetic forces for the progress and welfare of mankind. Even in recent modifications of entrance requirements, most of the Eastern colleges have failed to recognize the period of adolescence by providing simple subjects, restricted to the first two years, which could be offered as electives. In other cases, the subject matter and methods of study dictated by the colleges are so difficult that the strength, maturity, and intellectual development of the last two years are required for their mastery.

Since the college follows the school, it has a right to demand that the quality of preparation shall be at least as high as the quality of work done by a good student in an efficient high school in four years. If more is demanded than this, the usefulness of the school and the college to the student and to education in general is impaired, because both are under obligations to prepare as many youths as possible to act intelligently and

efficiently, when the time comes for them to undertake the duties and privileges of good citizenship. Every change in the scope or methods of either should be followed by a re-adjustment of the relations existing between them to prevent any decrease in the quality of work. In these adjustments, each can assist the other greatly. The high school belonging to the people, needs the college entrance requirements to help check its overdevelopment as the public frequently changes its purpose to meet the additional demands of society, while the college, in its search for truth, develops its ideal so slowly, that it tends to draw away from the high school and needs the restraint of the latter to keep it from making unfair and excessive entrance requirements. Further, as the high schools are forced forward to meet the new social and industrial conditions, the courses and subjects of the freshman year should be kept so flexible that a smooth and easy transition can be made, at any time, from a rapidly progressing high school to a college that persists in its traditions and changes only when new subjects, new courses and new methods have proved their worth.

Educational values were never more widely discussed than now, when educators differ so greatly among themselves as to what subjects offer the best training to prepare pupils for success in life or for entrance to college. The theory of mental discipline, while granting that certain subjects possess little practical value of their own, nevertheless concedes to them exceptional powers to develop the mind and to impart general culture. This theory which lacks fundamental proof, together with the prevailing ideas of college preparation, impedes very greatly the adjustment of the high school to the actual needs of the great majority; for many educators conclude that the college preparatory course is as good as any for all pupils who go one or more years to the high school, or even graduate without going to college, since it demands hard study and gives sharp mental drill. During the last fifteen years, however, the opinion has been spreading slowly that it matters little what a pupil studies so long as he studies hard and thinks clearly. Some of the ablest college educators, who are accustomed to shape entrance requirements, disagree concerning the value of various subjects for college preparation and the reason for prescribing them. An analysis of their reasons for favoring Latin

or German or science or history, or mathematics or any combination of these subjects resolves itself into a series of preconceived notions which have never been thoroughly tested for validity. Even the careful investigations of psychologists have failed to prove that certain subjects such as languages, mathematics, science and history are peculiarly fitted to give mental power of a general character. Moreover, recent statements on the topic by prominent educators indicate that some solution or working hypothesis concerning educational values must be formulated before we can discuss intelligently the educational aims and conditions which govern the making of curricula, and that a wise, sane philosophy of education must be established before we can know what subjects give the best preparation for college or for life.

President Schurman of Cornell said recently, that languages were originally introduced partly on the ground of their practical utility, but mainly as available substitutes for the literary and linguistic discipline furnished by the ancient classics. There has been a great change in our conception of liberal culture since that time, because Latin and Greek were then regarded as essential conditions of a liberal education. Today, Greek is practically gone as a college subject and Latin, even though holding its own, occupies no such pre-eminent position as it did. The practical man now acknowledges that the only reason for retaining modern languages, is that they are useful for persons who desire to read or converse in those languages.

President Maclaurin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says: "Some speak as if the test of culture were the knowledge of Latin, or of Greek, or of French literature, or of Italian painting, or of what not? As a matter of fact, it is none of these things, for I take it that the root of culture in any worthy sense of the word is the possession of an ideal that is broad enough to form the basis of a sane criticism of life. I willingly admit that such an ideal may be reached by various paths, through the study of literature, or of art, or of science. I should be the last to suggest that these are rival or mutually exclusive pursuits, or that any one can justly claim a monopoly of culture. But how can a criticism of life be broadly enough based today unless the main results of scientific investigation lie at its roots and the