THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

The article of Dr. Snedden appearing in today's CRIMSON on the question of college entrance brings out a new element of this problem in advocating that the secondary school should confine its efforts to providing an education that does not need to be supplemented by four years at college. According to this belief, it is not for the preparatory school to attempt to meet the requirements of the college, but, to the contrary, it is the duty of the college to fashion its methods after the dictates of the secondary school.

The second point that Dr. Snedden brings out is the fact that the College Entrance Board Examinations are extremely inefficient. In their stead he proposes to substitute psychological tests and secondary school records, both methods of judging college candidates that have proven highly successful.

The whole trend of his argument is against the practice of forcing the preparatory school to become a mere sausage machine that turns out a uniform procession of automatons stuffed with a scientifically balanced ration of minutiae. The danger is, however, that in attempting to avoid this evil by relying on the preparatory school to provide a sound background without the scourge of the College Boards, the matter of the varying quality of the various secondary schools is neglected. And in addition to this, under Dr. Snedden's plan the requirements of individual colleges are given no consideration. The result of this would be that the college instead of the preparatory school would be forced to confine itself to stereotyped education. But Dr. Snedden is obviously looking forward to the time when the preparatory school can and will be an educational rather than a cramming institution, and under those circumstances his plan is certainly a great advance.