BRIDGING THE CHASM

With the thought, enthusiasm, and money which has been expended in late years in reforming, if not wholly remodeling institutions of higher learning, there has become ever more apparent, the fact that the gap between the universities and the secondary schools not only has by no means been bridged, but rather is increasingly widening. Such must, indeed, inevitably be the case, the colleges advancing rapidly along the lines both of greatly diversifying their curricula and at the same time emphasizing specialization, the schools remaining essentially stationary both in courses of study offered, and in the attitude taken to them.

For this lack of simultaneous advance on the part of the schools, the colleges are, if not entirely, at least partially to blame. The old and reiterated cry against the rigidity of the required entrance examinations has in it more than a measure of truth. At the same time it is undeniable that the schools themselves have failed to look beyond mere set requirements, many of which, in the light of modern educational investigation, have been shown to be of little value in developing the boy either for continued work in college or for life.

Quite recently, realization of this second point has been evidenced among a large number of schools, and a committee has been engaged in drawing up a new preparatory school curriculum. At least one boarding school of large size has, moreover, gone a step further and has introduced, more or less informally, courses designed to give the student some conception of the actual world within which he lives, such as can not be derived from the study of algebra or Latin. Their aim, namely, the general broad view over and the correlation of the various forces which have produced the contemporary state of mankind, is almost a commonplace in the academic life of such an institution as is Harvard where not only many courses as for example, Biology A, but ultimately the tutorial system itself are designed to weld together isolated facts into a coordinated whole.

While these steps have, if somewhat hesitatingly, been put forward on the part of the secondary schools, there still remains the barrier imposed by the college entrance examinations. And it is from the side of the colleges, it seems, that the next step in unifying the educational programs of the secondary and higher institutions of learning must come.