A SELECTIVE PROCESS

In his report for 1925-26 President Lowell has emphasized a point which not many years ago would have been considered one of heresy but which now, due to change in conditions, is coming to hold an ever-increasing place in the minds of modern educators: that is to say, the restriction of education. "People engaged in public instruction are inclined to go too far in thinking that everyone should be encouraged to pursue his schooling to the furthest possible stage," writes the President, and thereby comments and takes a definite view on a problem which faces not only Harvard, but also every other college or university, however small or large.

The answer is essentially one to be answered only by the individual. Where should education cease?--that is academic education, for properly speaking, education in its broadest and truest sense can never cease. There is no absolute line of demarcation, no point beyond which will only serve to create what President Lowell calls "sad misfits of ill-directed ambition." But there is a system, or rather an order of things, which has been gradually evolving and which may help to make the situation less difficult and this panacea receives discussion in this same report.

President Lowell arbitrarily classes American colleges into two types--vocational and cultural. In recognition of this distinction, one may hope, lies the remedy, for, if higher education, as it is understood in the vocational universities, is eminently practical, it can not be objected to as being over idealistic. A man trained in one method of earning his living has not wasted his opportunities. Everyone does not possess a scholastic temperament and those who insist on higher education for everyone "do not appreciate that all true education is self education, and that to force a boy, beyond a certain point, to remain in school and do set tasks in which he takes no interest may stultify his mind and fret his character." This attitude is a revival of humanism and is a ray of light in a welter of academicians whose pedagogical zeal has overruled their sanity. When its truth is realized one may look for a disentanglement of the educational problem which especially in America, is growing dangerously complex.