A WESTERN PROPHET

The sympathy between faculty and student grows stronger with every new discussion of the modern educational system. The latest mediator in the student problem is President Clarence C. Little of Michigan, who, in Scribner's has written a stimulating, and in some ways an illuminating article. Dr. Little has selected four topics about which, he says, revolves much agitation in University circles; he has, admittedly, chosen them from a mass of others an I he does not claim that any one constitutes an issue. Each, however, does bear direct relation to both the student and Dr. Little refers primarily to the undergraduate and his preceptor. The matters are, briefly, the attitude of the college or university toward its students; the dissatisfaction of the students with present methods of discipline and instruction; the wisdom of admitting to college those whose fitness is doubtful; and the relation of religion to education among college students Certainly these four sources of argument constitute a rather large field to be covered in the compass of one short magazine article. Fortunately Dr. Little does not undertake to solve these problems he merely points out that they are real, not imaginary, ills and he suggests various means by which they may be met.

As to the relation between the faculty and the students, and the unrest of the latter. Dr. Little makes a point that some of the most prominent educators have ignored; and that is that youth is to be preserved; an education which serves to shorten the period of youth is only a blight. Youth should not be cut off; it should be made to grow. "Scholastic achievements must be made a part of youth, not youth a part of scholastic achievements." Here undoubtedly he has hit upon a vital point. Since youth is so valuable--and so fleeting--will not scholasticism tend to sap its strength? If allowed to overwhelm youth, it will; in the correct proportion, however, larger intellectual fields will be an aid to the preservation of the first part of life.

Omitting the religious question--in which Dr. Little takes opportunity to reassert his belief that the youth of today has a deeper and more genuine piety than that of any previous age--one may go straight to the argument concerning admission to the universities. Technical requirements to matriculation have no place in the discussion; Dr. Little has passed them by. What he dwells upon--and with some length--s a little-thought-of phase of the situation. He takes his stand as President of a state supported institution. A humane feeling, unselfish, philanthropic, is the first, one might say the chief and only requirement. Candidates for admission should be considered as citizens; their characters should be the test of their eligibility. "To assure ourselves, in so far as we can, that the boy or girl desiring a college education at public expense is able to show at least the fundamentals of a democratic social personality is our clear duty."

This article is one of the most frank, the most liberal--without sinking to fanaticism on any one point--that has appeared in the public prints in a long time. President Little, along with President Frank of Wisconsin, has reverence for the past only in so far as the past is of moral value; he welcomes foreign, and sometimes startling, innovations not as radical points of departure but as aids to progress. Every one of the matters which he has so ably and so sanely treated is the result of a narrow and one-sided educational scheme, having as its aim the compression of the individual into a conventional form and not, as is the new endeavor, into a spirit calculated to be both true to himself and the world in which he lives.