CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP

The Yale Daily News, commenting on the recent CRIMSON editorial on "Education and Pate-Stuffing," stated that "the day has not yet come when scholarship can be sacrificed altogether for "culture." This statement is one with which no serious observer of modern education would disagree. It is in the definition of scholarship that confusion arises.

There can be no dispute about the ineffectual training with which the average freshman enters college. "Adequate preparation," is indeed vitally necessary. The very existence of rigid examinations, however, makes this preparation more difficult by emphasizing the value of a passing grade rather than of genuine education. Since this is true, some substitute for the present system must be evolved.

The plan advocated by the CRIMSON-requiring the comprehensive English examination, the scholastic aptitude test, and a careful scrutiny of the applicant's school record-is admittedly imperfect. Ideally, as stated before, "if a similar broad examination were to be given in every subject, the entrance system would be adjusted as nearly as possible to the methods of teaching at Harvard." Nevertheless the CRIMSON believes that all advance should not wait upon perfection. The preparatory schools, if freed from the incubus of the examinations, would be able to improve their teaching in accordance with modern developments.

Emphasis should be placed upon the fact that an examination of the candidate's scholastic record forms an integral part of this system of admission. In this way the requisite factual information is assured. As a standard of judging preparatory schools the success of their graduates at college rather than on the entrance examinations is stressed. College study demands not so much a definite quota of facts-the variety of subjects accepted for entrance proves this but for that "ability to think," which is identical with the "ability to learn," in any but the most parrot-like sense. It is in this latter sense indeed, that it is encouraged by the present system of entrance examinations, and it is in this sense that the word "pate-stuffing" has been applied. Scholarship, it is true, can not be sacrificed to "culture," but neither should it be sacrificed to rote-learning.