AND AGAIN, THE SCHOOLS

The disagreement between college and secondary school, which has been lying dormant since the short-lived up-heaval in February, received a fresh impetus Saturday, this time from the side of the schools. Doctor Edward Howard Griggs, in a speech to the Massachusetts Schoolmasters' Club, reversed the old order with an attack of some violence on the colleges.

Dr. Griggs's first proposal was in regard to the secondary schools themselves. He objected to the focusing of attention on that one-tenth of the students who ultimately reach college, at the expense of the nine-tenths whose formal education ends with school. This is a matter beyond the range of discussion at present, for the logical solution, the early separation of those eligible for university education from other students, is still far in the distance.

When Dr. Griggs turns his guns for a broadside at the colleges themselves, his aim is rather uncertain. "Money is given too easily and too freely to the colleges," he asserts, "to be of value. Because of these gifts from outside, the colleges have changed." The validity of this assumption may be questioned by those who devote weary hours to canvassing for endowment funds, or to careful budgeting so that even poor professorial salaries may be paid. And, even if Doctor Griggs were right, he fails to capitalize his statement, beyond the exceedingly vague deduction that "the colleges have changed."

The question of athletics also attracts his notice. Boys have told him that they go to college for athletics. Again the doubtful virtue of indefiniteness weakens the charge. Unless there is a considerable number of such examples, this is scarcely a cause for worry; and stern supervision of intercollegiate sports has to a great extent removed the tramp athlete from universities.

Dr. Griggs's final assault states that the colleges make capable students "do time" by retaining for four years the man who has covered the ground in two; and especially, that teachers who have completed all the required work are obliged to "serve a jail sentence to get the M.A. and then the Ph.D. degrees." But the four-year requirement is not inflexible. At Harvard alone a fairly large number of candidates receive their degrees in three or three and one-half years; and if any of Dr. Griggs's two-year men should ever come to the University, they too would doubtless receive their deserts and march out, diploma in hand, in a glow of fame. The demands upon teachers, on the other hand, do to a certain extent exist; but the idea of making one or more degrees the summum bonum, sine quanon, be-all and end-all of secondary school instructors is not to be laid at the door of the colleges. If an M.A. is requisite for teachers in, Boston high schools, it is because the administrators of those schools have so ordained.

This gulf of opinion between the secondary school and the college still stretches, deep and dangerous, across the flat of America's democratic education. Charges from the one side or the other are vain material to build a bridge across; experiment and experience are the two cables that must finally span the gap.