BENEVOLENT DESPOTISM

In the failure to secure an opponent for the Putnam scholastic competition, inaugurated by Mrs. William Lowell Putnam, the futility of the plan, as it was executed last year, is obviously suggested; Tardiness and negligence on the part of the University authorities is alleged, but aside from these possible considerations, the foundations of this new scholastic field of competition were none too sound at its inception.

The glory that was won by the victorious college has been in several instances distorted into an assumption of definite educational supremacy. The justification of this claim would hardly rest upon the results of such a test of strength. For no sense of educational value could be more false than that which would judge the relative merits of two colleges or their corresponding departments upon the comparative standards attained by ten representatives in a single field, however general. Such judgement might further lead to an unbalanced emphasis upon the importance of examinations as criteria of educational achievement.

The inability of two parties to compete on unequal preparation is manifest, Princeton with a divisional system complete in two years. Yale with a system quite as dissimilar, Cambridge under a totally different conception of the curriculum, can scarcely compete with Harvard under a divisional plan in absolute accord with the terms of the competition. Harvard has made its own rules. This would be an obvious stumbling block in any field of competition. And particularly in the field of scholarship, one finds no definite limits, no rules of the game, whereby one and all may compete on the same grounds.

Meanwhile the specialized department can hardly afford to gamble in such a competition where the stakes may be so grossly overrated and misrepresented by scholastic interpreters. All that is gained is superficial, and merely feeds the public and the presses with new mirages. Until Harvard can find some medium for competition other than the present basis of divisional examinations, the plan is destined to a halting fate.