"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. "Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle; "nine the next, and so on." "What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice. "That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked; "because they lessen from day to day." THERE did lessons. But we seem to be living now in a period somewhere between the tenth and eleventh days of the Mock Turtle's scheme of education, and the term, students, applied in general to Yale undergraduates, may be used only with a sardonic cock of the eye. The authorities of the various universities are not blind to this paradox of "student" life: both President Angell, last summer, and President Lowell, this autumn, have made speeches bemoaning the situation and its causes. Yet neither, so far as I know, has publicly spoken of the causes behind these causes, nor has suggested a practical solution. They must know that only two groups, the authorities, wholly, and the undergraduates, in part, have the power to strike this blow, and that the undergraduates will not. Why do only a handful, out of each Yale College class, graduate with a bonafide education? Over and above this little group, who know what they want and get it despite the Yale System, there must be a quarter of each class, one hundred men, who have both the will and the ability to obtain an education in their four years here. Thus this paucity of study among undergraduates does not mean that they do not want to become educated, but that Freshmen entering college want other things more. They want to make friends they want to be recognized by the social organizations of the college. They see that the means to both of these desirable ends is to join in some extra-curricular activity. Often, not to have all their eggs in one basket, they "go out" for several things. Then, with appalling rapidity, they find themselves whirled through a vortex of tremendous activity, of tense competition, of endless work, much of it absorbingly interesting, much of it mere drudgery, until some of them emerge successful Senior year. Of these successful ones, some see that their position, so enviable in the eyes of all the college, for which they worked so long, and toward which all the underclassmen are struggling, is not worth while, for it was bought at the cost of an education. Others, supremely happy with their position and prestige, may or may not in after years realize the difference that a trained and educated mind would mean to them, but, whether or not they find it out, that difference exists. Thus the problem is "how to make Yale safe for study". Yale is not safe for study as long as overpowering temptations compel Freshmen and Sophomores to "go out" for too much extracurricular work. And it is a natural consequence of the overvaluation of these extracurricular activities that they have been developed to ridiculously exaggerated extremes of organization. Instead of being admittedly amateur avocations of some slight practical or artistic worth to the college or to the individuals engaged in them, these undergraduate products of the Yale System try to attain to the standards of similar professional undertakings conducted in the world at large by men who give their whole lives to such work. To take one example, examine the Yale News. This publication undoubtedly has far more raison d'etre than any other project in the extracurricular field, and, just as undoubtedly, renders invaluable and indispensable service to the University. Yet it is unnecessary that the life of the News heelers be one of constant late hours, of untiring drudgery, and of notorious neglect of lessons. In other words, to the News heeler, the News must be his primary interest, and the education for which his parents pay must assume a position of secondary importance. This is because the News, instead of being a bulletin sheet of concise college news, dates, announcements, and an editorial, is a six or eight-page paper containing many articles that are entirely unnecessary, which, nevertheless, take a great deal of time to write and edit. Thus the News prints long stories of football games which we have all seen or of which we could read at length in the New York papers. The News prints interviews which heelers have obtained at great cost of time and trouble, interviews which are read by perhaps one per cent. of the News subscribers. Simply because there is a feeling that real daily papers always have editorials, the News editors faithfully grind out one or more every day, regardless of whether or not there is something of current interest worth writing about and oblivious of the fact that their truly valuable editorials receive less attention because people grow tired of reading so many unnecessary ones. There is much of the unessential in the News: it is, on a small scale, a polished professional paper, but the college does not need such a paper. This same principle of overdevelopment holds true in practically all of the other extracurricular activities, not one of which is intrinsically worth as much to the University as is the News. Athletics, likewise, occupy far too important a place in undergraduate life, but there is more to be said in favor of organized exercise than, for instance, of organized play acting. A man of college age needs exercise more than he needs to know how to operate the lighting at a Playcraftsman performance. In fact, a further reason for cutting down the programs of the nonathletic extracurricular activities is that many men submerged by such work get time for practically no exercise. But athletics, being so much more in the limelight than the other student activities, have received a correspondingly greater amount of adverse criticism, hence will, I believe, be slowly readjusted to a saner basis; such a movement, indeed, is already under way as evidenced by certain agreements made by Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, reducing the time of pre-season practise and further restricting the eligibility for participation in 'varsity sports. Due to the pro-athletic feeling among the graduates, who are, after all, the owners of the University, no radical reduction of athletics can be made at present. I do believe, however, that a radical restriction of non-athletic activities can and should be effected without further delay. Such a step necessitates two things, first, a means of teaching that will be more attractive than the present one, so that more undergraduates will want to take advantage of it, and, second, an artificial restriction of extracurricular work, so that fewer men will be tempted to neglect their studies. The first of these provisions may be fulfilled as follows: by introducing "honors" courses into the College in all of the main fields of study, exclusive of science courses best covered in the Sheffield Scientific School; by compelling College Sophomores, who received a grade of seventy-five or higher in Freshman year, to elect one of these honors courses in which to concentrate during his three remaining years; and, by lightening other requirements so that these honors courses may be made really extensive in their scope and difficult enough to demand the major portion of a student's time and interest. The second provision, that of restricting extracurricular activity, can be effected by allowing none but honors students to participate in such activity, which should be defined so as to include all of the various class and college undergraduate committees, but, by no means, including the Student Council, or purely social or honorary organizations, or athletics, which should be open to all undergraduates. The student who does not put in the solid work necessary for passing the honors courses should be dropped into the non-honors category, thus relinquishing his privilege to take part in extracurricular activity. A race of supermen might put the necessary time on these honors courses and still maintain the outside activities at their present high standard, but the natural course of events would force a reduction of the |