THE DESIRE TO LEARN

Princeton's recent decision to allow unlimited cuts to upper-classmen maintaining third group standing is a sign of the times. For some years Harvard has had its "Dean's List" and last spring it extended the unlimited cut privileges to all undergraduates in the courses of the third group--these "intended primarily for graduates". At Yale the perennial agitation about the chapel was fanned last year by demands for greater freedom in cutting. Plainly the educational world is moving away from the idea of education by compulsion and toward the idea of education by desire. And if once the premise as to the existence of such a desire is granted, it is hard to find any fault with the tendency.

Compulsory attendance is based on the contrary idea--namely that to the average undergraduate education is distasteful enough to prevent his attendance at lectures, and that fear of eventual failure is not strong enough to counter balance this distastefulness. Incidentally dull and unpopular lecturers are spared the humiliation of speaking to empty benches.

Faults and dangers le very plainly in the path of any extension of the principle of unlimited cutting. But overbalancing these faults and dangers lies the great principle of educational healthiness--the ideal that students and professors should stand on their own merits and not attempt to learn or teach by compulsion. Every step in the gradual extension of freedom in cutting is a sign of progress.