PEARLS BEFORE SWINE

Among professorial indictments of the modern college student that of Dr. J. Edgar Park, President of Wheaton College, is not the least severe. In a speech before the Radcliffe chapter o Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. Park declared that crowds whose search for knowledge is merely subordinate to a desire for pleasure, are debauching American institutions of learning. "Comparatively few students are at our American universities for the purpose of scholarship," Le says. And, he adds, efforts to instill a love of learning in, barren minds, are as casting pearls before swine.

According to Dr. Park there is a remedy for this situation. Students should be separated into two groups: those who come to college for intellectual stimulus and to whom elementary restrictions and requirements only serve as checks to further progress; and the who come to college because it is being done. Of necessity the latter will I, treated like "preparatory school students, and will be forced to spend a certain amount of time in the college presumably in study."

If such a division were practical the proposal would be excellent. But the task of separating the studious sheap from the frivolous goals is no small one. No one cares to admit, except possibly to his intimates, that his presence in college is but a conventional period of growth: such, a condition might very well be-true but few will boast of it Whether or not Dr. Park is over-emphasizing a contemporary disease, it is difficult to say. Certainly, in spite of their flippancy, his remarks cut deep, emanating as they do from a man vitally connected with modern education. As for his suggested panacea--if it were applicable it would probably prove efficient; but he demands such devastating frankness from sinners that the plan appears more theoretical than practical.