The School Review Volume 9 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...with methods of teaching, courses of study, and lists of books. It may be interesting to take another point of view. Let us consider for a few moments the rationale of the subject. What do we mean by college-entrance requirements? More particularly, what ought we to mean by entrance requirements in English? College-entrance requirements imply a relationship of some kind between colleges and secondary schools. We may begin then by asking what forms or types this relationship may assume. If we attempt to answer the question, we shall find, I think, that as respects this relation there are in this country two distinct and opposed conceptions. For convenience they may be termed the Feudal Conception and the Organic Conception. The feudal system of relationships originated in England in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was transplanted bodily to this country at the founding of the two leading eastern universities, Harvard and Yale. In the East it is still the prevailing idea, though certain features of the organic system are making gradual encroachments upon it." Those who entertain the feudal conception in its extreme form, imagine the university as holding to the preparatory schools the relation of an ancient baron or over-lord to the common people. According to this view the university authorities live as it were in a moated castle, in proud isolation from the rest of the world. They lay down arbitrarily the conditions upon which persons shall be admitted to communion with them. They let in whom they choose and keep out whom they choose. The life within the university has only an accidental relation to the life without. The university has its own aims, its own ideals, its own standards, which exist quite independently of the aims and ideals a...