THE JUNGLE BOOKS

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of the State of New York has caused the more articulate notables in the educational world to emit loud and extravagant hosannas of praise. The very fact that this flood of verbiage is so completely unrestrained, however, indicates not that the educators are filled with a supreme and justified self-confidence, but that they are on the defensive against attacks made upon them and their system.

That these attacks are deserved is only evident; American education is in a parlous state indeed. Getting a really thorough training in a high school has become extremely difficult for the student, encumbered as he is with extra-curricular activities and business and vocational courses. While no one would advocate a return to Jesuitical methods, which make a wearing drudgery out of school, it is surely plain that the swing to the opposite extreme has been excessive. Education in the humanistic sense has become an anachronism in the American school. The chief reason for this state of affairs must rest with Teachers College of Columbia University and its disciples; it is a powerful directive force, and its main tenet is that the child should learn by "expressing himself" rather than by submitting to an academic discipline. For this purpose vast sums have been spent on schools replete with all the paraphernalia of the New Education, and the result is a nation suffering from acute maleducation.

To hope, that American secondary education will purge itself of this hifalutin nonsense, and get back to essentials is to indulge in an optimism entirely unwarranted by its past performance. To hope, however, that it may be forced to undertake at least a partial reformation if the colleges raise a sufficiently loud clamor, and in the case of the Eastern colleges which can afford to do so, apply some real pressure, is not too sanguine an expectation. Harvard, for many years the great innovator of the college world, should take the lead in guiding or forcing the secondary schools out of the Rousseauistic Jungle.