ELEMENTALS

It has been previously noted in these columns that the inefficacy of the Freshman year at Harvard is mainly due to the fact that the college has prompted the elementary preparation of its students from the high schools. The University can remedy the situation by raising the standards of the College Board Examinations. But to do this it must command the cooperation of the secondary schools.

As the higher scholastics of the Freshmen would materially raise the cultural level of the whole college, the preparatory schools would be forced to offer a far more advanced curriculum than at present. There is no question that such a change cannot be accomplished in a single year; the radical developments necessitated could neither be forced upon nor digested by the conservative organization of American secondary education in less than a dozen years.

One could not suggest a fifth year in the high schools to prepare the college prospect. Nor would the student look with relish on the prospect of an extra year, an added mile-stone on the road to a degree. No faculty would admit of its practicality without an increase of its members or its salaries. And when America is spending $386,000,000 less this year on secondary education than it did in 1930, when 175,000 school children lack primary training in the three R's because their communities lack cash, such a course is patently impractical. The only solution appears to be a sharper differentiation between men who are going to college and those who are not, a stiffening of the standards of the former, and, most important, the colleges cease catering to the theory that all men should receive a higher education. In overcoming the inertia of tradition in the relegating of secondary work to the high school, the colleges must take the lead; they hold the whip hand, and if they find their material indigestible, they have no one but themselves to blame.