Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-03-21

These 16 colleges hold charters from
state governments. Suppose that the
six New England States should con-
| stitute Joint commission with author
| ity to revoke the charter of any OF
| these colleges when it was found that
two or more of their graduates failed
in life the first half year after gradu-
| ating from college. How many char
tcrs do you suppose would be in exis-
| tence a year hence?. And yet, that
would be precisely as reasonable as
the present attitude of the colleges
which are members of the New Eng
land Board. Nay, it would be more
| reasonable, for this imaginary joint
commission would have been created
by law and would have been response
Bile to the state government which
| created it, and the men representing
the colleges on the New England Board
are in no sense responsible to the peo-
pie. or to the high schools, or to the
teachers.
There is one other little sec
ton in the rules and regula-
tons of the New England Board
upon which I wish to comment The
Board may withdraw approval from a
school at any time and from such
school certificates will not afterwards
be accepted until it shall have been
approved by the Board" l presume
that regulation is innocent enough, but
| if people do not wish to be under sus-
picion they should avoid all such reg
ulations. In the light of things which
| have happened, school authorities who
are responsible to the law cannot be
blamed if they suspect that that clause
is simply club which interested men,
| bers of faculties may hold over the
| heads of high school principals and
superintendent who speak their minds
| too freely.
The Effect on Town.
Now what is the effect in your town
or mine if the high school is dropped
out of the good graces of the New
England college board? First of all,
it is a notice to the people of that
community that their high school
cannot prepare for college, and in the
minds of most of these people that is
a fact equivalent to eternal educa-
tional damnation. Practically speak
ing, it means that two or three we'll
TODD, influential citizens, who have
two or three girls whom they want to
get prepared for the special demands
of a particular college at public ex-
pense, turn upon the school committee
and say, What kind of a principal
and what kind of teachers have you
in that school anyway" 1 sympathize
with the school committee, for they
rarely understand the situation. The
~ hui 1.
begin to bend their energies for the
next two or three years to getting back
onto the approved list of the board. If
there are 100 children in the high
school, there are usually not more than
20 who will ever go to college at all,
and not more than half a dozen, per-
haps, who will ever go to one of these
colleges. And yet the principal and
the faculty are frequently made TO feel
that their whole reputation is staked
upon the record that this haf-dozen,
more or less, is going to make when
they come under the frequently infe-
rior teaching power and the lax dlscl-
pine of some one college out or the
number. OF course injustice TO and
neglect of the great mass of the pupils
is inevitable. The principal of a small
high school IN my state told me not
long ago that in spite of all he could
do two of his faculty of six spent the
larger part of their interest and ener-
gy on one or two children of well-to-
do families who might eventually go
to some college represented on the
Board and who, as they well knew,
must at that time be sufficiently Well
crammed so that they would automat-
ically get by any kind of teaching in
the first half year of college.
800 High Schools Dominated.
Now it appears that there. are in the
vicinity OF 800 high schools in the New
England states under that kind of domi-
nation. Wherever one of those high
schools is, the elementary schools by
simple process come under the same kind
of domination. In other words, 1t is not
too much to say that the content ana
the teaching of public education in the
six New England states is far more UNI
der the government of an irresponsible
body than under that of the duly con-
stituted public authority. For the time
being, this board of delegates from 16
colleges are determining what the type
of the dominant influence in society in
New England shall be less than a gem
Grafton hence. Surely here is not con-
dition which can fairly be described as
liberty under the law.
s., do not wish to be misunderstood.
Neither here nor at Manchester last
month has it been in my heart to up
braid individual members of college
faculties The men serving on this
board are, as individuals. most estimable
gentlemen. Some of them are my warm
personal friends. 1t is a condition that
| am striking at and not at individuals.
Again, / do not wish to be understood as
asserting that college entrance require
ments are too hard. They are not too
hard. 1t is not a question of what is re-
quired and what is not, nor of how much
of this or how much of that, but it.ls
very much a question as to who requires
r HOY