or two years' study at some good secondary school, the chief function of which is to prepare students thoroly and broadly for college life. It would be a natural evolution if some of these schools should develop into regular "feeders" to a few strongly equipped, well-endowed secondary institutions.

The attempt to introduce Latin, algebra, and geometry into grammar schools has been made. Superintendent Nightingale of the Chicago high schools is enthusiastic over the success of the experiment of introducing Latin into the last year or two of the grammar school course. This experiment has been tried in Boston, but was not, I am authoritatively informed, successful.

(4) It seems to me that all remedies that do not include a decided increase in the amount of time given to secondary work toward the end of the curriculum must prove merely temporary expedients and not true correctives of the congested condition in the secondary period of education. We need more time in which to assist our students to digest and assimilate their mental food. Our brightest students may still be properly prepared for Harvard by the four-year course. The slower ones

-a large proportion of the students of average ability—should have an additional year in the secondary school, if they expect to obtain the bachelor's degree at Harvard in three years.

We gladly welcome the tendency toward a three-year course at Harvard College for the bachelor's degree. The movement will eventually strengthen both the college and the best secondary schools. The requirements for admission to Harvard, as they are administered, are so far in advance of any other American college that the three-year course for graduation is the only logical outcome of the situation. The almost simultaneous announcement of the new definitions of requirements and of the practical establishment of the three-year course is sufficiently significant.

Students who are not fully prepared to enter the Freshman class may now profitably remain at good secondary schools one more year in order to complete their preparation for college, and to anticipate enough work of the Freshman year to make graduation from college in three years not a difficult task. The

brightest students may still be prepared, by earnest work, to enter Harvard, after four years' preparation, and to graduate in three years. This arrangement will lead to more earnest and effective work both in school and college. It will be flexible and make possible the satisfactory preparation of a far larger number of candidates for the college. It will give additional efficiency and dignity to the work of the secondary school. It will create a fairer basis of comparison between the work of American secondary schools and that of English, French, and German schools of a similar grade. It will lessen the tendency to cramming processes and enable the schools to do something more for its students than barely to meet the requirements for admission to college.

Much could be done in the additional year for the slower and inadequately prepared students, to assist them to mature intellectually by discovering their aptitudes and starting them in the courses of study and along the lines of interests which they would most profitably follow thruout their college life of three or four years. Elementary French and German are not the only subjects which could be better taught in the small divisions of the secondary schools than in the large unwieldly sections of the Freshman college class. The older and more-experienced, able teacher of the secondary school would be quite as helpful and inspiring a guide in several subjects of study as the young college instructor who often begins to learn to teach by taking one or more sections of the Freshman class.

There are important general advantages in spending the Freshman year at college. These are growing much less important, however, to students who are members of schools which, in their buildings, grounds, and equipment, as well as in the freedom and general interests of their life, closely approximate college conditions. Especially is this true in the case of schools which send large delegations of candidates to one particular college. From such a school a candidate does not enter college a stranger to his class, even if his entrance is delayed one year. Accordingly, the experience of the Freshman year is not particularly essential to him. It is no longer as important in an athletic or social way as it once was. The

athletic, social, and literary life of a few secondary schools is an excellent substitute for that of the Freshman year, and, in some instances, has proved its equal or superior worth when put to the test by contests in athletics or debate.

The immaturity of the student and his lack of proper preparation for the atmosphere of isolation from his instructors which necessarily exists in the largest colleges, often make his Freshman year a particularly ineffective one. Such a student needs a longer time in the secondary school in which to "find himself" and develop the desire and the power to make the most of his college and university life. In the additional year, at the end of the college preparatory course, an immature or an ill-prepared student may be won to change completely his attitude toward his work and his ideals of life. It is the time in his life when he needs the patient sympathy and constant unremitting attention of instructors who know him intimately and will give him the individual assistance and special care which he needs. He would be helpless, if set adrift on the almost limitless sea of college electives, before he had the preparation and the will to choose his electives wisely. By requiring the additional year for the benefit of the slower or less mature students, the secondary schools will help forward not merely the higher education, but the best higher education. The people of this country so earnestly desire the best educational results that they will support Harvard College, or any other college of sufficient resources, in setting the highest standard and in insisting upon its attainment by all candidates for admission.

The standard is not now too high, for our brightest students of fourteen or fifteen years of age can complete their preparation for Harvard College in four years and obtain, three years later, their Bachelor's degree. The slower student or the student of average ability would be wise to take an additional year in the secondary school, if he intends to graduate from Harvard College in three years. We trust the time is not far distant when 75 or 80 per cent. of the candidates from the Phillips Exeter Academy will graduate from Harvard in three years. Many of them are already planning to do this.

As soon as Harvard College urgently encourages the lead

ing secondary schools to take the time necessary in which to prepare all students properly for the entrance examinations and for efficient college life in its varied forms, the three-year college course will be the rule rather than the exception. Many of these schools are already doing well a portion of the Freshman year work-doing it as well as it is done in the colleges. Many Freshmen who succeed in entering the large colleges would be better off if they had remained in their respective secondary schools, where they would have received good instruction and have been properly prepared for the trying transition to college life.

Let us frankly and honestly recognize the exact situation and speedily adapt ourselves to the new conditions, each in the way he can best accomplish the result-some by assistance from the grammar school or by special preparatory classes; some by dropping out the slower pupils and pushing forward the brighter ones; some by deliberately adding a year at the upper end of the secondary course of study-the best possible solution in all cases where this can safely and effectively be done. If we rightly interpret the new definitions of requirements, the schools which cling to the four-year program must raise their standard for admission or suffer materially in the effectiveness of their work preparatory to Harvard College. HARLAN P. AMEN

THE PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY

EXETER, N. H.

II

JUDICIOUS AID TO PUPILS

Dr. Amen has discussed the main question ably and satisfactorily from the point of view of a four-years' course. He finds this overcrowding and congestion especially in the year immediately preceding the preliminary examinations. In other words, too much is expected of a student preparing for Harvard College—at least, at a certain period of his school course. The student has been carrying on certain studies since the time he entered school, and he must carry them on to the time of the examinations. In the classical school this means Latin, Greek, English history, a modern language, and mathematics either algebra or geometry or both. Not one of these studies can be well left to be completed in his final year, for there are other things waiting for him there. He has enough to do if this year is the rounding up time for the work he has been doing since he entered the primary school. He has too much to do if any one of these subjects is begun, continued, and ended in this year. It is not that there are too many subjects so much as that he is trying to crowd too many years into one year.

I have never had the honor and the privilege to teach girls, so I have never had the misfortune to see the results of overwork. To me it has been a source of satisfaction to see a boy under the stress of hard work, as the first college examinations draw near. It is his first realization that every useful life is crowded and that there are never too many hours in a day. If, however, by "crowded" is meant that he must do two years' work in one-that he must cover so much ground in one subject that he has no time for another, that he must learn things that he ought to have learned many years before, his condition is an unhealthy one and calls for remedy and reform. The new system of college requirements permits a new ar