Water Under The Bridge

As the class of 1933 enters college its members are reminded to what an extent modern practice has robbed education of its former terrors. The pace of the average freshman across the campus no longer bears any relation to that of the snail. Education has been made as painless as possible. If, in easing entrance requirements so as to admit the vast numbers who are now candidates for degrees in America, the college authorities have sacrificed scholarship, they have added to the adolescent's joy in life. Addressing the students of Columbia at the formal opening of its one hundred and seventy-sixth year, Dr. Butler reminded them of the gruelling entrance tests of fifty years ago. He was frank enough to say that not only could no member of the present student body meet those tests, but that no member of its faculty could. That does not mean that the human brain is no longer able to grasp such erudition. It is merely a comment on the changing standards.

In 1879 the Columbia freshman had to know Greek grammar and composition; four books of the Anabasis; three of the Iliad; Latin grammar and composition; seven books of Caesar's Commentaries; six books of the Aeneid and six orations of Cicero. In history, English, geography and mathematics the tests were equally severe. "Acute paralysis" would afflict modern youths faced with such tests, in Dr. Butler's opinion. But the same condition would probably have afflicted the youth of 1879 if there had not been unbroken centuries of the so-called "humanities" drilled into their ancestors. It is another instance of adaptability to the mode. And education, like fashion, has modes. The Harvard freshman of 1879 would have shuddered at the idea of a School of Business, but he was able to endure the thought of being defeated in athletics by Yale. The Harvard freshman of 1929 takes the School of Business in his stride, but when he sings "three cheers for Harvard, and down with Yale" he means it with all the fervor of his soul. Dr. Butler did not go into this phase of the development of American education, but doubtless it has manifested itself to him. N. Y. Times.