The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-04-06

try, as well as to the best of the ! Rhodes men from the British colonies and to those who came from Germany before, as the result of Hunnish atroci-
 ties in the war. it was eventually de- cided to cancel the German Rhodes scholarships. I understand that the cream" of the American Rhodes men has represented about one-third of the total number; that another third
 has consisted of good average students. The remaining third has been less sat-
 isfactory. | The failure of so heavy a percentage of the American candidates to pass the com petltiYe examination is attributed I uu- derstand, by large number of English and also of American educationalists, te defects in the system of secondary educa-
 tion that obtains in the United States.
 This subject, of course, is realized to be one of the utmost delicacy, and British educationalsts offer an opinion regarding 1t only with the greatest reluctance and in the terms of diplomacy, but it is thought here that the American system of secon-
 dary education is somewhat too super ficiaf; that it results in inaccuracy and fails to implant knowledge in a fashion capable of lasting.
 When the American Rhodes scholar ships were instituted" said an educa- tonalist in conversation with the writer
 it was decided, both with view to se- curing a desirable maturity in the men who came to the university from the United States, and also that they shoulu, before taking up study in England have become thoroughly 'Americanized' to make it proviso that candidates for scholarships should have had at least two years at universities in their own coun- try. The examination which candidates for Rhodes scholarships have to pass in- cludes ppaers in mathematics algebra and geometry, and it has frequently been urged, as an explanation of the failure of so many candidates to pass, tat it is dif-
 ficult for them, after the lapse of two years or more, to regain their acquain- tance with these subjects. But surely 1t is evident that the students cannot have been well grounded In these subjects if they are thus unable to Tush up their
 knowledge of them sufficiently to pass an examination that at Oxford itself | would be regarded as a joke, especially with the greatest scholarship prize in the world before their eyes"
 Some American educational authori- ties" went on this expert, "give a diff ferent explanation of this defect, if one admits it as such, in your system of edu- cation. They put the superficiality of some American students down to the re-
 luctance of American parents as whole
 to have their children taught at an early
 age. The idea, of course, is that children
 should be allowed to have a good time
 until they are of what is generally con-
 sdered school age.-~ Tn England, on the
 contrary, when a child is 9 or 10 he or
 she is placed in a school as a boarder.
 away from home, and thus we get the
 mind trained and the foundations of knowledge laid two or three years earlier
 In life than you do. There are many other aspects of the question, of course
 Personally, I am inclined to believe that you will never get a really virile system
 of education from a body of teachers of
 whom the vast majority are women, but that, of course, is a debatable question" This year, after a two years postpone
 ment of Rhodes examinations, 64 scholar
 ships are to be awarded to American stu dents. In the ordinary course, each
 American state sends two men to Oxford;
 the reduction in the total number this year being due to the fact that Oxford
 university is now already filled almost to it's capacity in consequence of the en-
 trance of so many English students who
 would have gone up in previous years had they not entered the army instead.
 Various reasons are advanced for the
 failure, the failure that is, of the United
 States to send it's best type of student
 to Oxford as winners of the Rhodes schol-
 arships. The expert already quoted gave, as one of the chief reasons. the tendency
 throughout the United States, to regard all scholarships, including those founded
 by Cecil Rhodes, as charity This
 educationalist pointed out that, in this
 country no such prejudice exists against
 scholarships, that, in fact, the exact op
 posite of the case Many of our most
 distinguished men," he said, have ob-
 tained their university training alomst
 entirely through winning one scholar
 ship after another and in appraisng the
 success of these men. it is frequently
 pointed out that, as a student, they won
 this or that scholarship. A typical ex-
 ample of this is the case of the new
 Lord Chancellor, Lord Birkenhead, for
 merly Sir Frederick Smith, who has
 just attained the apex of the legal pro-