CANAPE OR COCKTAIL

In these days of flux and change, when Harvard has a President who intends to make it an institution of higher learning, something greater, perhaps, than the pep-and-polish prevalent in the American college, the demands of the University on the preparatory school should be the subject of particular research. The repeated complaints against so many of the Freshman courses such as French 2, English 28, German A, find their basis as much in the failure of the preparatory schools to train their scholars for college work as in the poverty of inspiration in those seemingly necessary interludes to the cultural career. If there were any question of enlarging the University, some justification might be found for the laxness in the entrance requirements which permits men to come to Cambridge so badly prepared that these courses and their like are inevitable. But, if the freshman year is to be much more than an ironic repetition of the highlights of a student's school work, bolts must be tightened on the College Board Examinations.

Surely it should not require a year to mould the prospective scholar into ductile shape for upperclass work; at least, that year should involve a progress beyond his intellectual adolescence. The standards in the elemental subjects with which the prospect has chosen to arm himself to pass the Chairman of Admissions must be raised so that these subjects need not be taught to such students in College in their introductory form. None would suggest the elimination of primary courses, but they should become the canape rather than the cocktail of the freshman year.