With the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles came the demolition of the great fortifications and the military harbor. For three or four years the intermittent roar of dynamite unsettled the life of the island. Then followed the financial inflation, and finally the real peace and the revival of the old forgotten sea-baths. Without them the island would rapidly become bankrupt. They attract many thousand visitors during the three summer months and these visitors directly or indirectly provide the sole support of the natives.

But the sea-baths are on that little strip of sand called die Düne. It is a magnificent beach rising like a miracle just above the high water line. The fantastic cliffs of Helgoland are in the foreground a mile distant. The North Sea, forever brewing trouble, is all around. The protecting White Cliff is gone. The protecting wall is gone. The Dune is shrinking. In 1926 the sea snatched a greedy bite from it. Something should be done, but the Prussian government and the Helgolanders are at odds, and the years slip by. The "Helgoland Question" is a serious and an imminent one. Prussia quite naturally is growing tired of pouring out marks by the million for the benefit of an island which has lost all its military im

portance, and whose inhabitants escape the income tax and practically all other taxes because of the old treaty obligations which Germany, to do her justice, has fairly well remembered. Helgoland cannot save her Dune. Her slender resources would amount to nothing. Prussia will not, except to a limited extent and in her own way, do anything. Her plan seems to the Helgolanders of dubious merit and perhaps more likely to hasten the destruction of the Dune than to save it.

Last summer I spent some time on this captivating island of the North Sea. I walked the promenades of the Oberland and rejoiced that Germany, whatever her motives, has insured long life to the main island, now about a hundred acres in extent. I went to the Dune again and again and had as perfect surf-bathing as I have ever enjoyed. I walked often to the threatened northern end and inspected the ravages of the 1926 storm. Will the problem be thrashed out and the means of salvation found before it is too late? It makes the visitor long to do something, to go even to the length of digging into his pocket for a few futile dollars. Back on the main island of an evening, listening to the outdoor concert of the Kursaal orchestra, his mind is still on the Dune.

As he eventually walks out on the dock to take a motor-boat to his departing steamer he passes under a great sign which reads: Kumme We'er. This is old Helgolandish for "Come Again," and he is not likely to decline if circumstances make his coming half way possible. When he does return will the Dune still be there?

T

HE higher education is primarily concerned with the intellect. Other conditions and forces than the intellectual belong to the higher education, such as the moral and esthetic, but the intellectual makes a peculiar appeal and has a peculiar significance.

And what is the intellectual? Is it not to seek truth, to distinguish truth from untruth, and both from untruthfulness; to compare truth with truth and to induce

new

truths; to weigh evidence; to judge; to analyze; to infer; to classify; to understand proportional values; to consider relations; to apply the law of causality; to interpret fully and fairly; to be honest with one's mind and not simply with one's conscience; and to conclude a reasoning process with certainty and accuracy? Negatively, is it not to avoid sentimentalism; to eliminate clap-trap; to cast out the interesting as interesting; to eliminate the soft, the easy, the "snap" course; to subordinate desire; to curb appetite; to expel laziness; to cease to emphasize "activities"? Comprehensively, the intellectual stands for cubical thinking, for thinking in three dimensions, for thinking in breadth, more for thinking in height, and most for thinking in depth, of relations. The intellec

tual means a scholarship which is both discriminating and comprehensive, a scholarship inclusive of fact, embracing wisdom in method, thoroughness in research, nobility in vision, and constructiveness in conclusion. And all these elements, so diverse, so many, are well summed up in the simple phrase "Intellectual accuracy."

Are our colleges and higher schools creating this force and disciplining this quality? I wish I could say that such a creation, such a discipline were dominant. For is it not a fact that intellectual slovenliness, intellectual carelessness is a characteristic mark of the intellectual processes of our youths? Has not the purpose of "getting by" rather than of getting down to the truth, or of getting up to the highest achievement, come to possess the youthful mind and will? Are not correctness and thoroughness in learning made a taboo, and has not precision of word and accuracy of fact come to be classed with "prunes and prisms"? A distinguished professor in the law school of an historic university has lately written to me, saying, "I am just in the midst of reading some three hundred examination papers, and am profoundly depressed over the failure of our educational processes.

This age of democracy in which we live may have much to commend it, but it has taken away any distinction that used to be attached to the term 'college graduate.' I have lost all respect for the term. This and similar circumstances have thrown a serious damper upon my former ambition to make the Law School an exclusively graduate school." President Coolidge, at the 150th anniversary of Phillips Academy at Andover last year, said, "Two great tests in mental discipline are accuracy and honesty. It is far better to master a few subjects thoroughly than to have a mass of generalizations about many subjects. The world will have little use for those who are right only a part of the time. Whatever may be the standards of the class-room, practical life will require something more than sixty per cent or seventy per cent for a passing mark. The standards of the world are not like those set by the Faculty, but more closely resemble those set by the student body themselves. They are not at all content with a member of the musical organizations who can strike only ninety per cent of the notes. They do not tolerate the man on the diamond who catches only eighty per cent of the balls. The standards which the student body set are high. They want accuracy that is wellnigh complete."

The intimation given by President Coolidge regarding the low passing mark can be made broad. Most colleges allow students to pass with a mark of sixty per cent as a standard for intellectual knowledge and intellectual processes.

This low grade is begun with the very beginning, or before the very

beginning, of the college course. The College Entrance Examination Board is a doorway through which most students, who are examined for college, enter. In June of the year 1927 the board examined 22,384 candidates. These candidates wrote 74,957 answer books. Apparently no less than thirty-five per cent of the books received marks of fifty-nine per cent or lower. In individual subjects the record is a pretty sorry one. In "modern European history" the rating of more than one half of the candidates was less than sixty per cent. In "Latin poets" just one half fell below this passing mark. In "two-year Greek" no less than seventy-five per cent were below sixty, and in "third-year German" exactly half. In "solid geometry" the deficient ones were more than seventy per cent, less than twenty-eight per cent passing. I have selected subjects in which lower marks predominate. In certain of the higher ranges of these studies, the showing is better. In a few, a hundred per cent of the candidates received a passing mark. These damaging testimonies might be greatly multiplied both in quantity, diversity and degree. Do they not prove that accuracy is not a mark of our intellectual methods and affairs even at the very commencement of the larger intellectual life?

2

Do the American people understand the significance of such inaccuracy and inaccuracies, such intellectual weaknesses, slovenliness and slipshodness as a part of our higher education? Does the American home appreciate the fact that its son or daughter may become a stu

dent in the best American colleges knowing only three fifths of each of the subjects they are supposed to know? Does the tax-payer under• stand that not a small share of those who enter the colleges each year are guilty of such ignorances, inadequacies and incompetencies?

Of course, a "pass" mark at Oxford or Cambridge is one thing. It is not for me now to question the wisdom of the historic condition and method; but a merely passing mark, a low grade, in an American college is quite a different matter. For the student who, on entering the American college, is negligent of his opportunity and faithless to his duties, is shutting the door in the face of other students of greater ability, inspired by a nobler zeal, and quickened by a determination to get the most out of the college. The faithless, or only partially faithful, man or woman in the American college is a bar and obstruction to the highest scholarly movements and developments of the whole American community.

The causes of this lamentable condition are possibly more serious than is the condition itself, serious as that condition is. The causes are, of course, manifold, yet of them I wish to point out four, and only four. First, the content of the curriculum in both fitting school and college has passed over, and is continuing to pass over, from studies demanding exactness in learning and thinking to studies allowing generalities in learning and vagueness in interpretation: studies which sacrifice depth of reflection to breadth of interpretation. Students in the undergraduate colleges are failing to emphasize the

mathematical and physical sciences. They are electing the modern languages, history, sociology, economics and psychology. Not for one instant would I be understood to depreciate the value of such studies. These subjects have tremendous worth and a necessary place in our educational system. But every historian and every sociologist would acknowledge that his subjects do not necessitate the accuracy of understanding or of reflection that geometry, calculus and physics require-they do not demand thinking to a point. The historian and sociologist may say that their subjects discipline qualities and elements of the mind more important than accuracy; but even with such granting, the seriousness of the lack of accuracy may also be acknowledged. Almost sixty years ago, President Eliot, in his inaugural address, said that "to observe keenly, to reason soundly, and to imagine vividly" are essential duties. Each study should promote the securing of these three great conclusions. "To observe keenly," however, is a result especially won by mathematics and the physical sciences.

A second cause, closely related to the preceding, concerns the unrelatedness of the courses and the scattered studies that the students select. These studies often seem to bear only slight relation to each other. One student may have such a diversity as French, modern history, psychology, music and sociology. Such studies, good as they are, stand for extension and diversity, and not for depth. They represent breadth of information rather than accurate thinking. Diffusion stands for superficial knowledge, concentration stands for power. Scattering in studies tends to make a scatter-brain.

A third cause, found in the public schools, relates to the necessity of promoting pupils from one grade or year to the following year or grade. The pressure in each school, or in each grade in a school, for simple physical room for pupils is immense. Each new class is larger than the preceding. Therefore, the governing authorities declare "we cannot afford room or money for the derelicts." The sixth grade must go on to the seventh to make room for the incoming fifth. Therefore, the unlearned, the unlearning, the careless, the slovenly, the indifferent are pushed onward and upward. In some schools and grades the teacher is required not to "fail" more than ten per cent of a graduating class. Such a mood and movement prepare the way for intellectual slovenliness in the higher forms of our education. A further cause, and it is the last I shall name, relates to the inadequacy of the tests and examinations which the schools give. These tests are likely to be tests of information. They are not tests which prove the exactness of the student's understanding, or the comprehensiveness of his judgment, or his power to weigh evidence. Too many schools moreover give no examinations at all.

And what constructive suggestions can be made for casting out this demon of inaccuracy which besets our higher and other education? The causes of it which I have just named indicate also the methods of removal. First, let the studies which the students elect for themselves, or which

teachers or parents elect for them, be of the severer type-the severer type which demands thinking, hard and solid. Second, let these studies represent subjects having continuity and close relations. Let these studies necessitate intellectual concentration on the part of the student. Let the student, and let us all, know that mere knowledge is of slight value in education; let it be declared from the housetops that the process of securing knowledge is of the utmost worth. In the third place we should have proper facilities for the proper doing of our whole educational work. These proper facilities represent before all else a proper number of teachers of fitting ability, character and training, rooms and buildings of proper size and condition for teaching and for learning. Classes are altogether too large for the individual teacher. Classes should be cut down to one half the usual size. Buildings are altogether too small for the work that ought to be done. Of course the immediate conclusion is that the taxes for education, which are now at least one fourth of all the taxes of the ordinary town and city, should be doubled. Such a lifting of standards and enlargement of facilities would tend to remove the American girl and boy from the atmosphere of half-faithfulness to the atmosphere of full doing of full work, to the mood of proper performance of their every duty. A fourth method for the inculcation of accuracy lies in the constant obligation of making examinations real tests of power of thinking, and not mere searchings into the attaining or failing to attain knowledge. But in addition, and far more important, let the colleges,