RAISING STANDARDS

The announcement from the Graduate School of Education that the degree of Master of Education can be obtained only after two years of graduate study and that the doctorate will now require a higher standard of work in the school suggests again the present tendency on the part of professional educators to make training in their field as adequate as its importance implies.

Those who would remodel the present college educational system, seeing in its products too many defects for any hope of accomplished perfection often forget completely the necessity for strong and capable direction in primary and secondary school work. There is far too little known in this day of changing conceptions and fluctuating principles about the exact mental, physical, and moral discipline which the modern child requires. With the home leaning, from either ignorance or pure selfishness, upon the school, a higher type of educator is most necessary that the colleges need not click their gates against faces more ambitious than intelligent.

That the Graduate School is now able to further such a lifting of standards in education is most encouraging. An ancient sage whose name has long been associated with higher education considered it his grandest duty to instruct the youth of Athens. Too little respect has centered about those who have, in this particular tradition, followed Socrates. The Graduate School of Education at Harvard will surely induce more to respect the educator by making him respect his degree.