GIVE AND TAKE

Many of us who are interested in educational problems complain of the American system in general as being fundamentally wrong, and we hear vague sighs for the English method. Examinations are prescribed work, the bane of our college existence, are said to be a mere cold blooded ticketing of students; there is no freedom. Through school and college we are dogged into receiving an education which has been aptly described as a fair amount of knowledge in one field and a shrewd suspicion that other fields exist. We are prone to look to England for the solution of our own problems. It is rather interesting, then, to read in the "Atlantic Monthly" (The Refashioning of English Education, by Caroline Spurgeon) that the nation which possesses Oxford and Cambridge has its problems too--"the refreshing of our education in closest relation to life; in order to meet the needs of our great industrial population"--and that "America of all countries in the world, is the one that can teach us most."

The contention of the author, who is a member of one of the numerous committees appointed by the Prime Minister to consider England's educational problem, is that the few have been favored to the disadvantage of the many, and that all students should be taught English and learn to know the literature of the country; above all education should be broadened to bring into close contact with actual life, whereas the New World desires to polish off her instruction, the Old World must revamp hers.

The specific statements that "only recently has English had any position at all in English universities, or formed part of the ordinary or recognized studies"; and that "Professor Baker's training in dramatic art at Harvard is a revelation of live and vigorous teaching," and of the close relation which can be made between a literary subject and life;" and that America has been led "to aim, in her universities, at an all-round development, physical and social as well as intellectual, and to provide means of physical and social well-being far in advance of anything we have yet attained"--such statements should cheer considerably those who bewail our method in general. We have much to learn, but perhaps our foundations are firmer than many believe. It is pleasant, indeed, to think that while we can polish off our education by borrowing from England, we can give her much in return.