Angell Deplores the Lock Step System in American Education in Report to Yale Overseers--Stresses Ten Points of Error

President Angell of Yale, in his annual report to the Overseers of Yale University, stresses ten points in discussing the American educational system and its bearing upon Yale. His ten points follow:

We still labor in too large degree under the lock step system, which makes substantially the same demand on the bright boy as upon his less able companion.

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The American boy lags a year or two behind his British and Continental cousin in his educational progress because of too little acquaintance with really hard work, too long and possibly too many vacations devoid of study, poorly organized programs of study, and so on

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The undergraduate is ill informed about political affairs, and notably indifferent to them, except in the presence of an election.

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At least two years can be squeezed out of the present (educational) procedure and still have a normal youth of nineteen better trained and more genuinely educated than is his brother today at twenty-one.

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Too many of the rewards of college life, of which both parents and students are avid, place a premium on physical and social maturity.

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We can furnish a less flabby training by stiffening the intellectual requirements and by stimulating the student to a more fundamental use of his intelligence; and it is to this end that our tutorial systems, our comprehensive examinations, our honors courses and the like are directed.

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Student life is geared up to a restless and incessant round of occupations, some worth while, others not.

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Yale can better serve the country by keeping her student body within reasonable size by choosing the strongest student group she can secure, and then giving these men the very best education that intelligence can devise.

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Undergraduates are growing constantly more sensitive to the finer values of college life.

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Yale needs a carefully organized bureau, where accurate current information could be obtained regarding contemporary conditions in the typical occupations which every year absorb the members of its graduating classes; also a personnel service which would help the student to determine with some exactness for himself what his real qualifications are and in what fields of endeavor he can hope to be successful.