CONSUMMATE INTELLECT

Again the present educational system in America has been challenged, this time a by a college undergraduate rather than by a professional educator. W.H. Hale, in the current issue of the Harkness Hoot, has accused the American university of debasing its function by stooping to popularism and then trying to cure the evil by legislation on requirements, by the establishment of new institutions, and by the erection of costly buildings.

Educational reform is unworthy of the name, Mr. Hale believes. Chicago has made an important advance in abolishing departmental distinctions and making higher university training open only to exceptional men, but neither Chicago, nor Wisconsin, nor Rollins--the three most radical in education reform--have gone to the root of the ineffectiveness of colleges, the immaturity of the American undergraduate.

The House Plan, the Sterling Library, and Yale's Institute of Human Relations Mr. Hale holds are only imposing superficial palliative measures where drastic changes are needed. In his enthusiasm for his main thesis, Mr. Hale has overlooked the real value in such institutions as the House Plan. His claim that further development of social life in the Houses will strangle independent scholarship can hardly be justified. Quite aside from the possible disadvantages of an undergraduate life devoted to pure scholarship, there is no reason why the unpretentious social relationships in the Houses should interfere seriously with intellectual achievement of a high order.

If Mr. Hale goes too far in condemning the House Plan, there is nevertheless validity in his fundamental point that colleges, if they are to foster mental development on a high level, must limit their numbers to the few men who are equipped through interest, training, and ability, for really advanced academic work. Attempts to hedge between the democratic ideal of mass education and the ideal of developing intellectual leaders of some calibre have had unsatisfactory results in both directions, as the storm of criticism during the last few years shows. The colleges are squarely faced with the necessity of choosing between accepting large numbers whose interest is not primarily, nor perhaps even secondarily, intellectual and whose stay at college has a doubtful educational value, and accepting a small group of exceptionally able men.

The question is clear enough. Higher education in America is not very high. Out the colleges to make intellectual development their chief concern? Can a university serve the community best by insisting on the paramount importance of mental education?

Obviously there would be many lecture-halls on the market if all colleges decided that their functions was to educate only potential geniuses. The best possibility for a satisfactory solution of the difficulty probably lies in an accentuation of the difference in standards which already exists among colleges. Those which are unambitious in intellectual lines can still fill a great demand, and probably a great need, for "college life," shorn of its worst absurdities. Those which aspire to produce great intellectual leaders can do so far more effectively by concentrating on that one thing. It means sacrificing nine tenths of what constitutes college life at present, including things which may be as valuable as purely mental growth, but it is the best way to produce that rara avis, a really strong intellect, ready to "spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind."