A FOCAL POINT

The convention of the Headmasters Association now entering its second and final day is an impressive gathering of the men from all parts of the United States in whose hands lies the mental development and outlook of rising generations fully as much as it lies with the colleges and universities, the technical and professional training schools.

To Harvard the work of these men is particularly interesting in its relationship to the college, for it becomes more apparent with each new development in this period of flux in the evolution of the college curriculum that before any racial or important changes can be effective in higher education the ground must be fully prepared in the primary, and, more specifically, in the secondary schools. For purposes of effective cooperation in order to avoid those dangerous pitfalls which yawn for the incoming Freshman whenever the purposes of school and college diverge even slightly from the parallel, no finer means could be devised than such a conference as this where discussion is carried on before the background of a college in active movement and in the presence of those who are shaping its policies and defining its aims.

Furthermore, Harvard is doubly appropriate as host for this meeting. Probably because of a traditional dislike of proselyting she has in the past been too prone to let relations with the preparatory school become highly informal and indefinite. The kind of relationship fostered by the Masters Meeting, lacking any element of the sentimental graduate influence, and based wholly on a fundamental community of educational interest should be strengthened and encouraged, more emphatically so because Harvard, by virtue of her wealth and enlightened leadership offers in its tutorial system and its implications much which is of unusual importance to the Headmaster in whose hands lies the adequate preparation of the sub-Freshman for the collegiate curriculum.