HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION?

With obvious pride in its achievements, the annual report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching scores a feeble bull's eye by asserting that one-third of college seniors are intellectually on a par with high school students. The report then dissolves into 90 pages of general discussion of educational ills and suggests the usual generalities by way of improvement. Despite the mass of blundering detail and despite the Foundation's failure to think any of its problems to practical conclusions the report does raise, if not appreciate, the fundamental problems of American education.

Recognizing the unsatisfactory nature of present methods of admission to college, the report states vaguely that the most effective system is that based upon a continuous individual record of the student's activities in every sphere. The present system based upon standard examinations though unsatisfactory must remain until uniformity is achieved by the secondary schools. The Foundation has apparently not considered the possibility of devoting itself to this task. Proceeding to the colleges proper, the report attacks the dominant position of professors in assigning credits, but it fails to offer a substitute. In a similar manner the report discusses the provincialism and the competitive individualism of the colleges, the political side of education, the relative cultural advances of students in the various fields, the difference between true education and formal academic instruction and other problems of varying importance. Constructive suggestion is negligible and the reader is left with a fatalistic attitude toward the future of the American college.

The Foundation has finally realized that football is not the greatest problem facing American educators, and this latest report is concerned largely with issues of a more educational nature. Colleges suffer today largely from their lack of correlation with secondary schools and with other colleges. The resulting repetition of work and the lack of standardization can be eliminated only through the supervision of a national body. The Carnegie Foundation possesses the elements essential for the erection of such a body, and might grow into an institution of great significance if it could forget football and devote itself to education.