THE LADDER TO FAME

Anyone who has ever scanned the list of monographs ground out in Germany during the last half century will agree with Professor Koffka's opinion, printed elsewhere in this issue, that in Germany "students want to become scholars." The emphasis on painstaking research in German universities is perhaps as great as the emphasis on "activities" in American universities. Inasmuch as scholarship would seem to be the aim and end of university Instruction it is surprising therefore, that Professor Koffka finds as much to commend in American institutions as he does.

He shrewdly points out that the reason for lack of organized athletic activity in Continental universities is that there is no fame attached to athletic preeminence. One suspects that it is the fame gained by scholastic achievement that drives the Continental student through stacks of rusty volumes. If the ability to make ten yards through the line were as highly prized in Germany as it is in the United States no doubt ten thousand aspirants would don helmets and shoulder pads.

If this analysis is correct there seems to be some hope of remedying the defects of both types of universities. A cultivation of a sense of values is necessary in both cases. Once these values are fixed, public opinion will make them just as effective as it has the false values which are leading to pedantry in the one type and athleticism in the other. In Germany the character building which results from participation in college journalism, dramatics, and athletics must be recognized as of some importance. In the United States there is the far more difficult task of convincing the public in general and the students in particular that scholastic achievement is deserving of the highest honor. And this case is the more serious because while on the Continent the minor points are lost in overemphasis on the major, in America the major issue is sacrificed to incidentals.

To test reform with public opinion appears to be a way of avoiding concrete suggestions, but unfortunately it is the public judgement of values which must be changed: and it cannot be changed if public opinion is not conscious of the role it is playing. Keys and ribbons and other tinsel will be of no avail if the effectual public opinion remains grossly ignorant of the error of its ways.