Mothers Who Urge Their Sons to Be Quarterbacks, Not Students, a Cause for Scholastic Ills, Says Greenough

"Mother prefers to have her son a quarterback on the football team rather than to have him a scholar", said Dean C. N. Greenough '98, at the concluding meeting of the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools held on Saturday at Boston University.

In his speech Dean Greenough maintained that the lack of scholarship among the college undergraduates of the present day lies largely with the mothers of the students. The student, he stated, gets the impression from his mother that athletics are more important than studies, and therefore is not interested in study. He is quite willing to let the leading 25 men in the class do the real work, while he gets by with just enough C's to keep him off probation. And the trouble is, he went on, that the kind of students who lead the class in scholarship are often of an unfortunate type and not men who can be thoroughly admired.

The average undergraduate is not far sighted, according to the Dean. He does not look ahead, or if he does, he does not seem to realize what scholastic achievement in college will mean to him in later years. At the age of 50 the undergraduate will wish he had studied more at college, instead of spending four years in loafing. At this age he would not care to be a C man, but he seems to regard the half-century mark as so far distant that it is not to be considered.

The student who realizes that he will have to put his supposed learning into practice immediately after graduating shows a tendency to study hard and industriously, according to the Dean. This is the case with law and medical students, who work exceptionally hard. The student who does not see that his learning will soon be put to practice, however, shows a tendency to be very lax in his studying. This is especially true of the men specializing in the Liberal Arts.