WHY THE BLUFF?

The genesis of the college "bluff" has been traced to its remote psychological roots in the insistence throughout early education upon a prompt answer of any sort, rather than an honest "I don't know." The current Educational Review points out that a wrong answer counts no more against a student than inability to answer at all. From the beginning students are encouraged to write "something", whether they know anything or not. This dangerous facility is carried into college, and the student, trained unconsciously in this form of intellectual immorality, develops the art of bluffing to its highest degree.

Assuming this analysis to be true, the problem resolves itself practically into a question, not of reorganizing the educational system, but rather of reforming the educational attitude. At present the average college student probably feels justified in bluffing curricular work in order to devote his time and effort to outside activities. If intellectual interests, which so often seem subordinate in American colleges, are reinspired, the occasion for and the practice of bluffing will cease. Until then the bluff of "pencil point knowledge" will appear the acme of shrewdness to the sophisticated undergraduate.