First, cut off one year from the college course, without lowering the entrance requirements; secondly, in view of the far greater efficiency of the secondary school, reduce the entrance requirements to college, and retaining the four year's course, permit the boy to enter college a year younger; thirdly, drop one year from the college course, increase the length of the actual weeks of residence and instruction to thirty-eight or forty, and endeavor to disabuse the mind of the average collegian of the belief that college is a place to dawdle and loaf four years for the sake of a degree that he does not earn, but which he generally gets just the same.
The discussion has recently been resumed by President Judson of the University of Chicago. It is fair to interpret his laconic statement that "The best thing to do with the freshman year is to abolish it" as meaning that the period of secondary instruction should be reduced by one year. Whether this be done by shortening the periods now administered by the high school or the college is of less importance.
The problem is clearly stated: assuming that two years must be eliminated from the period of elementary and secondary education, find the years. It is plain that this can be done only by a careful study of the material and methods employed and a reorganization of the work of the period involved. It is a study involving not only the twelve years which have preceded the college course, but also the earlier part of the college course itself. Having found it possible to eliminate one year from the elementary school, the problem is reduced one half. I am confident that conferences of high-school and college teachers in foreign languages, English, mathematics, history and science, going over the materials and methods of secondary work in the same careful manner employed by the departments in the university schools above described, could easily eliminate a year by the avoidance of duplication and closer coordination of courses.
In the matter of foreign languages all will agree that it is much better for the elementary work to be done in the high school. In fact, there is abundant evidence in the practise of European countries and in some schools in this country that the study of foreign language may be begun advantageously before the high-school age. With improved methods in the high school and better correlation between high school and college, it should be possible for students to complete the elementary work in foreign language and either drop the study on entering college or go on with more advanced work without the repetition of any work already done. Against the elimination of elementary work in foreign language in college it may be urged that with the great variety of subjects included in the high-school curriculum many students will complete their high-school courses without foreign languages, and as colleges require a certain amount of foreign language of all candidates for a degree, they must either offer elementary courses or throw the student back upon the high school for a still longer period of preparation. But as the student who goes to college must either present foreign language
