Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/360

356 example, that more of these preliminary or preparatory studies are disposed of before entering the professional career. Further, in the mastery of languages the foreign student seems to have, whether from inheritance or local conditions, a readier facility in rapidly acquiring usable command of these subjects. But with all this granted, is it quite sure that we have found a real cause, or merely an excuse for existing conditions? It is a condition and not a theory which confronts us and we can not afford to confuse the problem by any false lights, however alluring such a method might be.

However, it is not so much in the matter of actual difference in the relative status of these pupils in school achievement at a given age. It is rather in the matter of attitude toward things scholarly. One has not to go far into an inquiry to assure one's self on this point. Again and again has the writer heard and seen such expressions as "Don't let your studies interfere with your college duties," "fraternity is more important than scholarship," "only grinds pay any attention to marks," etc. Furthermore, it is rather evident that comparatively few give especial effort to achieving scholarship honors, such as prizes. Phi Beta Kappa, etc. Only rarely does one notice any emphasis in college papers of fellowships, research achievements, etc. One misses the eager passion for scholarship for its own sake which forms so dominant a place in the educational history of earlier days. The impression can not be escaped that the student attitude the country over is rather dominantly as intimated above, though it may be more open and avowed in certain sections than in others. "Stover at Yale" is not pure fiction!

Various attempts have been made to find some adequate explanation of this condition. For example, the dominance of commercialism has been assigned as a factor in this attitude and is involved in the scholarly decline. Let it be admitted that in this there may be a grain of truth, yet it is wholly inadequate as an explanation. We hear it over and over again that scholarly ability has a distinctly commercial value. Now if this be so then one ought to find a growing importance attaching to the highest possible standards of scholarship and educational achievement. But the obvious lack of just this is the very problem which confronts us. Again, one finds emphasized the dominance of athletics, and the social dissipation in college affairs as responsible for divorcement of the more serious and primary considerations. And these express an undoubted element of truth; but again they are not the whole of the matter. They are but symptoms; the real trouble lies deeper and must have more critical concern.

To the mind of the writer the root of the trouble lies in our present-day educational methods. And one of these involved is what may be called indiscrimination. In our zeal for education we have been disposed to regard it as the one panacea for every social and civic ill. This is emphasized in such phrases as "education the foundation of