THE GOSPEL SPREADS

The tutorial system has begun to invade the preparatory school. The annual report of the Rector of St. Paul's School announces that it has been decided to institute a form of honors course. Instead of meeting with their classes the abler students have special assignments with an instructor twice a week to conter about work assigned and to discuss advanced projects.

One handicap which has faced the universities in their effort to institute honors courses and tutorial systems, to leave more to the individual effort and research of the undergraduate and less to the traditional lecture and test system has been the lack of proper training on the part of the preparatory school. The incoming Freshman arrives armed with the requisite number of facts but with a mind whose development has been retarded by the herding which it has undergone continuously from childhood. The mental processes work only in a crowd or with the crowd. Knowledge means nothing unless it is translated into English Composition, Ancient History, Elementary Physics, Geometry. Even then it connotes merely passive listening, repeating and forgetting, never or rarely thinking.

Because of this mental attitude the college must spend a year, often two, in readjusting the student's relationship to and understanding of education. In many cases it accomplishes this purpose by requiring Freshman "orientation courses"; in others by general distribution and introductory requirements. In spite of these artificial aids, often burdensome to teacher and student alike, the mortality among Freshmen unable to make the jump is unnecessarily large.

For many years President Lowell in his reports has called upon the preparatory schools for better preparation, not so much factual as mental. The change in the curriculum of St. Paul's could not have been better designed to meet this demand. By giving the schoolboys of higher than average ability a taste of the honors course, of tutorial work, on independent effort, not only those actually partaking of the advantage will benefit, but the whole school body as well will become reasonably familiar with the collegiate educational atmosphere. Consequently, on becoming undergraduates their minds will react more quickly to its influence.