INTENSIVE, OR WHOLESALE?

As Mr. R. Keith Kane remarks, very different circumstances have produced the English University and the American University. They have developed from different beginnings and in different environments. But the results are the really interesting things. Intended estensibly for the same purpose-to train young men to become useful citizens of their respective countries, the English and American universities have developed widely divergent systems, of which the relative efficiencies have received and certainly deserve a great deal of attention.

The English system bears the same relation to the American that the Old World intensive agriculture bears to the large-scale surface cultivation still typical of American farming. In the former case, a small area is carefully tilled, and studied, in order to raise the maximum produce which its natural fertility makes possible. In the latter, whole-sale methods are applied to vast territories, and a fair yield is ordinarily obtained, which rarely represents the full return of which the land is capable.

The analogy in education is surprisingly close. American colleges turn out their yearly thousands, uniformly educated with almost no attention to natural capacity. The poor land and the fertile land is treated alike--the unproductive is labored over with the same industry as the productive with the resulting waste and inefficiency which might be expected. The English college, on the other hand, limits no man's opportunity by the stupidity of his class-mate. The best men are permitted and assisted to reach their greatest possible development; the less capable are allowed to enjoy several years of agreeable companionship and congenial study without the continual harassing of hour examinations, lectures, tests and what not. The individual seeks his level.

No doubt this system has imperfections. Perhaps the less gifted man, since less attention is given him and less energy expended on him, is not carried along willy-nilly, as in the American college, over a certain number of hazards and hurdles. But education can never be other than a problem for each individual student. The immediate question which it is necessary to answer, is shall he decide his own fate and profit according to his own inclination and ability or shall he be standardized and machine-handled like each of his fellows, entirely regardless of his own individual capacity.