Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-09-16
OUR HIGH SCHOOLS
ARE A FOSS|L|zED
REMNANT OF PAST
Rev. DR.. Wasson Saws Grad
yates Have to Begin All
Over Again.

The average graduate of the elassi-
cal college could not parse the Latin of
his diploma, and in five years he knows
little more of his Greek and Latin than
his bull pup" declares Rev. DR.. Ed
mund A. WATSON. rector of st. Ste
phen's Episcopal Church. this city, in
Il caustic criticism aimed at the present
public high school system, which, as he
says, "compels the graduate of the high
school commercial course to finish in a
private school before he is fit TO take
a job"
Every 1ourishing business college is
a deserved reflection on the high
school, says the popular rector, 'for
the latter teaches everything the bust
ness college teaches, but SO poorly that
its graduates have to go and be taught
all over again.
You don't find private colleges tax
ing the graduates of Stevens's Institute
or of Cornell Agricultural school and
teaching them mechanics or farming,
for Stephens and Cornell do their work
so we'll that it does not have to be done
over again.
There is something wrong, for the
high school is doing poorly the things
it ought not to do at all, and it is like
wise doing poorly the things that it is
bound to do.
Too many parents, ambitious for
their children's advance, are under the
glamour of the classical college course,
But thai course is only an elegant loaf
inn ,@1,ioI ,a1f.L Jo,c r,act sF,JaptS
more harm thar good.
Calls II "FOur-year Swindle,'
so manufacturing is it that a man
can spend four years in it and still not
discover that it is a big %swindle, and
he viii SEND his son to repeat the
action, or. rather, inaction.
THE only good part of a college
course is the social life and the sports,
which are usually condemned as the
side-shows.
They, in fact. beat the big ring and
the students feel this, and they choose
this better part.
The best feature of the classroom
work is that SO few students ever really
enter into it. They slide through some
how, and the most useful accomplish
ment the graduate carries with him
through life. as a result of his four
years in college, is the college yell.
IF you wish your boy TO loaf in Gle
giant surroundings for four years, send
him to college. If you wish him to get
in with his social betters and thus rise
above you in the social scale, he stands
a chance of doing it in college.
But if you wish to train him, keep
him out of college, The technical and
professional schools are the thing to-
day. There the boys work, and when
they graduate they have an equipment
hat viii enable them to take a useful
place and to advance as far as their
abilities warrant.
Even if4these schools and colleges
did cultivate. what good is cultivation
If you can't make a living. Culture is
only bitterness to a beggar.
Such broadening of the faculties as
is needed to give the best grasp of the
practical subjects should be a part of
the high school system.
CAS- Professor Simon N. Patten, in
structor of economies in the University
of Pennsylvania, says, THE high school
remains a fossilized emnan of past
ages The misfortune is that the pub
lie school system depends on the high
school for its justification.
UNLESS it can stand objective tests,
such as other reforms offer, the schools
must lose the support or which their
efficiency depends"