REVOLUTION FOR THE SCHOOLS

If their headmasters accept the new plan of provisional college admittance at the end of the Junior year, a lot of school boys will not have all the efforts of their senior year sucked towards the whirlpool of College Boards. Dean Gummere has long considered changes in Harvard's requirements. Too little opportunity has been granted the applicant to prepare for college, not merely for exams, and the introduction of the new Plan C would allow him to concentrate profitably on more advanced subjects and fields new to him as sociology and economics.

Passed around among school headmasters for sometime, Plan C has so far failed to rouse enthusiasm from more than a third. They claim that if released from the "anchor" of College Boards, the student's natural lust for leisure might win out. But the advantages to the student would seem to outweigh these objections. Once over with the red-devils of College Boards, he will have one year to break away from the repetition of French verb forms and reach out into the rich literature of the language. His preparation for college might consist, not of learning dates in American History, but in coordinating the social, economic and historical background of the field.

But they very suggestion that four years of school might be accomplished in three turns the significance of Plan C into much deeper channels. Many thinkers besides Stephen Leacock have complained that education, is "catting up" life, that repetition and waste study are becoming a farce. Three years, for example, are too often spent on French and German where two, if efficiently taught, would be equally complete. The problem of Plan C goes hand in hand with a thorough inspection of scholastic curriculum. If progress is to be made in college admission requirements, all down the line of high school subjects a serious critical revision is needed to shake off the paralyzing grip of tradition.