FROM SCHOOL TO COLLEGE

Dean Briggs has an article in the March Atlantic on the Transition from School to College in which he discusses the transition in personal character, broadly speaking, from youth to manhood, which the average Freshman undergoes. The average Freshman is considered as having "an ill-seasoned body, a half-trained mind, jarred nerves, his first large sum of money, all manner of diverting temptations, and a profound sense of his own importance." In this interesting condition he is dropped into the large, free college world, where study seems to be optional, so far as he can hear, and where he meets "new and alluring arguments for vice as an expression of fully developed manhood." His untried, unsettled character is put to the test, subjected to a strain under which it must either take form and strength or gradually give way.

To meet this strain the boy must in some way be prepared; the school and the college must co-operate to lessen the violence of the transition. The main object of both school and college is the same-to establish character and to make that character more efficient through knowledge and mental discipline. The transition, then, should be merely the continuation in a wider field of a gradual growth already well started, There should be continuity of steadying, stimulating influences. At present, the only continuous influence of much force is athletics; but athletics, however open to criticisms for over-prominence in college life, are certainly for many Freshmen a most effective bridge over the morally perilous first months. They supply a keen motive for effort, persistence and self-restraint. Study, unfortunately, does not in most cases so rouse the ambition and sense of responsibility. The reward is apt to seem too remote. The student has the happy feeling that college of itself, without effort, will make a man distinguished. The saving power of effort, therefore, is not experienced and character is left to take its chances.

To establish a continuity of mental and moral influences from school to college the great necessity is to build up gradually a sense of responsibility. The college must rely on that; it can not wisely impose further restrictions. The school should steadily increase the boys' responsibility and as steadily strengthen him to meet it. One method of doing this is the system of "Prefects," which has worked well where it has been tried, and has shown good results in the later life at college. The college, on its part, should co-operate through some system of optional Faculty advisers and of systematized visiting by some committee of older undergraduates.