QUESTION OF SCHOLARSHIP

The following article by J. T. Addison '09 is reprinted from the Harvard Graduates' Magazine:

I notice in the March number of the Graduates' Magazine a reincarnation of the obsolete theory that the proof of the intellectual superiority of the public to the private school is to be found in the undoubted fact that in college a large percentage of public school men get first and second group honors, whereas a small percentage of private school men are similarly honored. The fact of the percentages I do not question; nor, for present purposes, do I even deny the scholarly superiority of the high school. But I do join with all who possess more than a meagre knowledge of the facts in denying that the familiar old percentages prove the familiar old conclusion.

Public Schools Send Picked Men.

Why must all commentators scrupulously overlook the glaring fact that undergraduates from public schools are intellectually a picked lot, and that undergraduates from private schools have been subject to no selective process whatever? A small proportion of grammar school boys go on to high school. A majority of those who take this step are better equipped intellectually than those who do not. Again, among high school graduates, only a fraction (large or small) go on to college. Here too the little band that progresses includes the intellectually foremost. The result is that those high school graduates who get John Harvard or Harvard College Scholarships are--from the point of view of mental capacity and scholarly inclinations--the picked lot of a picked lot of a picked lot.

No Selection in Private Schools.

The private school graduates; in sharp contrast, have never gone through any sifting process. Of course they have been subject to examinations like all schoolboys everywhere; but in their case no process of gradual selection has been at work to produce the intellectually fit. The boys go to school at 12 or 14 years of age because their parents want them to and can afford to send them; and for like reasons 90 per cent of the same boys go to college.

In the Grammar School.

On the grammar school boy lies the burden of proof to show why he should go on to high school, and on the high school boy lies much more heavily the burden of proof to show why he should go on to college. But 90 per cent of the private school boys go to college as a matter of course, whether they are intellectually negligible or not. All they need is an allowance and a passing mark in the entrance examinations. And so, serious and trivial, stupid and bright, they all herd in together. Of course they will not stand as high in scholarship as the high school boys. That foregone conclusion, however, is yearly rediscovered and posted up before the gaze of a good-natured and undiscerning public.

The University of Berlin has over 10,000 students enrolled.