THE NEW REGIMENTS

President Eliot laid the groundwork for the modern American University, and the general change in educational policy which started with the adoption of Mr. Lowell's plan of concentration and distribution, is based upon it but that plan marks the hint of departure from the then prevailing system of university instruction. Before its adoption every Harvard undergraduate selected sixteen courses to fit his intellectual taste and comfort, but today a student seldom makes a move without consulting a multiplicity of divisional and departmental requirements.

For tomorrow, there are only vague ideas as to whether rigid requirements will mount or diminish. Today, students and head-masters seem to have a hazy idea that higher educational institutions are "loosening up" and "getting progressive." They seem to be suffering under some delusion based on the abolition of November grades and attendance and on that assumption are neglecting the study of the basic cultural and disciplinary subjects.

Only recently have the colleges started publicly to defend their standards, but the defense is being prepared carefully by the leading educators of the more prominent institutions. Mr. Valentine's capable article is phrased carefully in a series of rhetorical questions while Professor Friedrich has not hesitated to state the problem succinctly in a recent Atlantic Monthly as follows, "A doctor must spend months on end bent over an evil-smelling carcass, dissecting it with his own hands" while a lawyer has to master the "dry-as-dust mass of legal lore which may be and probably is utterly repellent to his active, dramatic nature. Unless he possesses self-discipline, and a good measure of it, he cannot get his degree."

It is only too clear that the relaxation of administrative rules does not prophesy a return to 1910. As Mr. Valentine has so pointedly asked, "Is it not education . . . that constantly narrows and regiments the way of ascent?" Though the 1934 student works freely at his honors and tutorial work, generals and divisionals are, and must necessarily remain, the restrictive and regimenting agents that require a sturdy foundation that should be prepared before the student enters college.