THE COLLEGIATE TIME CLOCK

The custom of hurling brickbats at American colleges and their system of study has by now become rather hackneyed; still, when a man so distinguished as Hamilton Holt takes up the cudgels, he is sure to get a hearing. His assault on the lecture and recitation systems at the luncheon of the Harvard Teachers' Association Saturday has drawn no little attention, for he represents not impotent battering at what is established, but construction of something new, and, as he thinks, better. Rollins College, of which he is President, is, perhaps, the most radical departure from the norm of universities in America. There are no recitations or lectures; there are no cuts; instead, the student faces a definite eight-hour day; four hours of mental work, two of manual work, two of physical education. The result of this system is intended to be the abolition of the gulf between professor and student; the establishment of true democracy among the entire college body; and active instead of a passive student attitude; finally, truly complete and well-rounded education.

Such a program comes not far from the ideal of President Eliot. As a type of education for secondary schools, it appears excellent; whether or not it is successful there may soon be known through the experiment at Avon, Connecticut, where such a school is now in existence. But as a college measure it possesses serious defects, beyond the almost insurmountable task of supplanting by it the present system.

Such a stereotyped daily schedule as this suggests too closely a working man's hours to be approved by college students; not from a feeling of superiority, but from the attitude of self-sufficiency and independence perfectly natural in this group. The right to cut may be abused, but that does not argue the necessity of its abolition and the substitution of factory hours and attendance requirements.

Likewise the two-hour period of manual work is out of place in a college. In an ordinary institution of liberal arts the student has no particular need of such training; in technical and agricultural schools, his entire work is in this line. Such specialization may be an evil, but it is a necessary preparation for a specialized world.

The hours of physical education is a sensible requirement; but athletes will certainly give as much time as this to exercise; and as for other students, the word "must" reverberates unpleasantly, and required physical drill shortly assumed a most repellent aspect.

President Holt's basis of reasoning is sound; but his method of applying it is weak. This sort of training belongs in secondary schools; when it is employed in college, its arbitrary nature is opposed to the very independence and completeness of education at which it aims.