BRIDGING THE GAP

In the decision of Johns Hopkins University to devote itself entirely to advanced students, the New Republic foresees the gradual passing of freshmen and sophomores from institutions of higher learning. Educators are beginning to recognize the change in attitude which comes over the undergraduate somewhere in the middle of his college career. The average freshman set adrift in the larger seas of college and university life falls a ready victim of the banalities of collegiatism and athleticism, and slides along a year or two, treating his courses as a necessary evil. And it is only after long exposure to scholarship that a Faustian thirst for knowledge begins to inflame him.

President Lowell, in his last report, attributed the relative inferiority of American universities to the difficulty of having to cope with the mental immaturity of incoming freshmen. For this condition, the secondary schools are chiefly responsible. Faced by the specter of the College Entrance Board examinations, they are inclined to make success in them the standard of achievement. The successful high or preparatory school teacher is the one who can bring the largest percentage of his pupils safely by the examiners' perils. And since surmounting these is within the reach of almost all, secondary instruction jogs along in peaceful mediocrity.

The problem confronting American universities is that of shifting the formation of potential scholars back to the schools. One obvious plan would be to raise the standard of entrance examinations. In this way the secondary schools would have to give many of the freshman courses which properly belong to them. But the danger of causing more cramming of formal facts or added emphasis on the mere technique of passing examinations is too great to render this solution entirely satisfactory.

The Johns Hopkins trustees recommend the transference of the transitional phase of education which they are relinquishing to the junior colleges. These institutions pick up the loose ends of preparatory training and link them with the first two college years. But deprived of the maturer influence of upper classmen, the youthful student is hardly as well off at the junior college as in the freshman or sophomore class of the ordinary college or university. The opportunities for browsing around libraries, the possibilities of contact with an inspiring lecturer or tutor are much more numerous at the higher institutions. The elimination from the universities of this plastic period in favor of developing the highly specialized graduate schools does not seem the best method of sloving the problem. By insisting on a greater standard of endeavor from the primary grades upwards, by widening the present scope of the schools even at the expense of a departure from the traditional trivium and quadrivium, secondary schools should be able to present students for college entrance who are fitted for advanced work.