HELP YOURSELF

In the current issue of the Forum President Lowell once more enters into the debatable land of modern education. In his article "Self-Education in the College" he advances his famous hypothesis that all higher education in its best form is self-education under guidance. In doing so he seeks to sever from the hydra-headed contemporary scholastic monster what many prominent educators have come to regard as the caput mortuum of every university, the principle of discipline as distinguished from the principle of letting men think out things for themselves.

At Harvard the greater significance of personal effort in study, as compared with instruction, has been emphasized by the tutorial system, by the general examinations, and most recently, by the Reading Period.

Of course, as President Lowell points out, college presents a problem which is not evident in either secondary schools or in graduate schools. In the first, authority is recognized; in the second, the purpose of preparing for one's career in life is the guiding force. But in the college the student drifts about on uncharted waters. Seemingly there is nothing for the college to do but guide the motiveless creature through the morasses or else fire him with a zeal which will send him off on the trail of self-education. Men like Henry Adams scoffed at the idea of self-education in the nineteenth century. No wonder that so many students in this complex age turn back in distress at the magnitude of the task set before them. To many experience alone means education. To these outside activities afford this experience.

Such conditions inspire possimism, but it seems that it is all the outcome of what the Germans would label Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. The educator who would inspire the great mass of students now wallowing in the sloughs of scholastic hebetude is in most cases a voice declaiming in the wilderness, because the multiplicity and complexity of college life has sent such a terrific avalanche of courses and activities down upon the normal student that he can only fight blindly ahead and trust to get through the best way he can. As long as chaos is the prevalent factor in educational circles it is safe to say that the student will be the victim. Along with the great mass of experiments tried upon him the average student would appreciate a simplification of education. Until he ceases to be dumbfounded by the intricacies of the paths he is expected to tread and can be shown the objective of his scholastic endeavors, the active--minded youth will continue either to spend more time on his outside activities or drift aimlessly along through his college career.