Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/37

Rh courses; then, as occasion required, pupils could be readily transferred from one course to the other; and even the senior who found his Greek too much for him could drop it and take up the alternatives of science and mathematics, pursuing more than one branch of these at the same time and reciting with more than one class if necessary. The plan is perfectly feasible, just as at Harvard we find members of different classes taking the same courses together. In the English High School we have members of the advanced class studying several branches of mathematics at once, and reciting with different classes. There is no difficulty or trouble about it. The member of the advanced class who wishes to review a certain study simply finds a class which is reciting in that study at an hour when he is disengaged and puts in an appearance to recite with this class. The only objection that I see to this would arise from the conservatism of professional educators as being inconsistent with custom and tradition. The tendency has been to separate the courses rather than unite them, but the conditions have always been quite different.

I have made special reference to Harvard College rather than to any other, because the new scheme of requirements for admission has been tried there sufficiently long to observe how it works, and these results have been made public. Boys who have succeeded at Harvard under the new regulations would have been equally successful at any other college under the same conditions. I have also cited as special examples graduates of the Boston English High School, because this school has probably sent more boys to college under the new system than any other school, and also because I have had an opportunity, through acquaintance with these young men, of knowing how they have succeeded and what they themselves have thought about their ability to get the most possible benefit from their college course.

The English High School of Boston is not a fitting school; its original design was that it should be a finishing school, and this plan has never been changed. Its course of studies covers a period of three years, and is the usual high-school course. To this is added a post-graduate course of one year, during which the student has great freedom in his choice of studies. The three-years' course is well arranged to meet the requirements of those who have no definite intention of pursuing their studies further, and the fourth year meets the demand of those who desire to do special work. A very few of the graduates of this school from choice studied Greek under a tutor during their advanced year in school, and a few more from necessity did the same thing, as they found the alternatives for Greek too difficult for them. This Greek was in most of these cases "crammed" for the special purpose of passing the entrance examinations,