PHARMACEUTICAL EDUCATION.

Why We Should Not Demand a High School Prerequisite For Colleges of Pharmacy.

BY OTTO A. WALL, PH. G., M. D.

Read at the 1907 meeting of the A. Ph. A.

While it may be admitted that higher education is quite desirable for pharmacists, it is at the same time true that it is not so absolutely indispensable that it must be made compulsory, either by resolutions of the Conference of Pharmaceutical Faculties, or far less so by the laws of the various states.

It will be conceded that if we could make college education in pharmacy more popular and more general than it ́is now, an immense gain would be had, even if colleges of pharmacy remained as they are now, without raising their entrance requirements or increasing their educational demands. At present, the great majority of applicants for registration before state boards of pharmacy are not graduates from any college, and an overwhelming majority of them have never attended a college of pharmacy at all.

To improve such a condition we should not make entrance to colleges of pharmacy more difficult, but easier. We should begin to improve the educational situation from the bottom up, not from the top down. To be able to do this we must understand the conditions, just as a physician must make a diagnosis, before he can prescribe a cure. We will therefore ask a few pertinent questions and let the published opinions of some of the prominent educators of our country answer them.

Why Are Our Students From the Grammar Schools Not Better Educated?

Mr. Edwin C. Cooley, Superintendent of Public Schools in Chicago, answers as follows, in the Philadelphia Evening Post for June 8, 1907:

"There is no denying that our public schools are doing too much over-head shooting Probably this tendency to over-shooting in our public school educational system shows more plainly in our high schools than elsewhere. What is a common school education for, unless it be to fit the mass of pupils for the practical duties of life? And if the high school leaves its pupils with only a preparation for college instead of a preparation for life, when most of the pupils cannot go on to college, does it not score a lamentable failure in efficiency and over-shoot the mark?

...

"The effect of treating the high school as a college feeder rather than a People's College is felt all along the line of the elementary grades. The course of study in the lower grades is made subservient to the idea of high school graduation in the same way that the high school course is framed to fit the idea of the college or university. The grades of pupils are put through studies which no reasonable human being would assign them on any supposition other than that of graduating from high school and passing on to the college. And yet it is a certainty that only a small percentage of grade pupils enter the high school, to say nothing of being graduated from it, while the percentage of those who reach college is almost infinitesimal."

"Common school training should be a common-sense training adjusted to bear directly upon the reasonable expectations of the mass of pupils, upon the needs of the community and the needs of

the individual in his relation to his community After all, utility should be the supreme test in education. And this standard should be especially applied in shaping the course of study in the common schools. The statement that the curriculums of the common schools will not generally stand this test may be a surprise to many parents; but such is the lamentable fact." That these defects exist in our common grammar schools every one familiar with public education knows, although there may be many who would not like to admit it in public. Since these short-comings cannot be remedied by ignoring or denying them, our first duty should be to bring pressure to bear to improve the educational facilities for the children of the masses, the children who must go to work at a comparatively early age; this is of more importance and will be of more far-reaching effect than the effort to enforce academical requirements for the children of the upper classes. It ought not to be difficult to so improve our grammar schools that graduation from them would be more than equivalent to two years' attendance in high school under present conditions.

But, some may say, these defects in our schools are to be found only in the back-woods, or in the newer states and territories!

Are These Defects Found Also in Our Cities?

Let Mr. William J. Shearer, Superintendent of Schools in Elizabeth, N. J., answer this question. I quote from an article on "School Children in Lockstep," in World's Work, August 1907:

The following extract is from an editorial in the Philadelphia Ledger: There is in the United States a city only 72% of whose children attend the public schools. Of these, only seven-tenths of 1% pass through the high school; only 4.3% reach it. Eightyfour percent leave before they have gone half-way through the grammar school. Sixty-six percent go only through the primary grades; 53% stop at the second reader.

"The city in question is facing a future in which there is no assurance that one-quarter of its population will be able to write their names; or more than half its population be able to . . . . do such simple sums as can be counted on the fingers; or oneeighth possess the merest rudiments of knowledge; or one in twenty-three have mastered the common branches; or one in 143 have availed themselves fully of the education provided by the state. . . . The city is Philadelphia.

"These facts are well-nigh incredible, but, being beyond doubt, they afford reason for the most humiliating reflections and call for instant resolutions to seek for the cause of a condition so terrifying!"

Every member of this Association should read the article referred to. He will find there some very surprising and humiliating statements regarding another great city and state-New York-which will convince him that there has been too much "hurrah" and too little real worth in much that the public has been taught to believe almost faultless education.

I have, during the past year, directed attention to the educational conditions in various states, and have demonstrated that only a small fraction of one per cent of American children ever get an education that is equivalent to graduation from high school, because either they live where there are no high schools or they have no money to attend them. There is no such thing as "free high school education." High school education, even when tuition is free, is beyond the means of most children because comparatively few can afford to

Why Are Our Common Schools Not Better Than They Are? It has been a common complaint in most of our high schools of various kinds that the children now coming from the common schools are not as well qualified as when we ourselves were boys and girls. This is not merely our imagination or our self-conceit but it may be conceded to be a truth. In fact, it is the cause for the present unreasoning clamor for a high school prerequisite for colleges of pharmacy.

I say "unreasoning" advisedly; our complaint is mainly that our students come to colleges of pharmacy with too little knowledge of arithmetic; that they are unable to work examples in percentage; therefore we demand "one year in high school." Arithmetic is not taught in our high schools; it is taught in the grades. Therefore it is unreasonable to demand one year in high school to secure better knowledge in a branch that is not taught in high schools! Demand better common school education, and compel the school authorities to sit up and listen!

The editor of the St. Louis Republic, in the issue for June 9, 1907, answers the above question:

"The country schools, in fact the primary and the common schools, too, have lost their grip, or at least their quantity and quality are not equal to the demand, and higher education has been fed, forced, coaxed, pushed and philanthropied out of all fair proportion to primary and lower instruction.

"This means that the state and philanthropists have been improving education at the top. We are so overwhelmed with colleges that we are at our wits' end to supply them with pupils. "Upon the other hand, the need of the masses for primary forms of education, especially out of the cities, never was so poignant or so great.

"The fact that young men and women are fitted for and are about to enter college, is, ipso facto, proof that they are people of some meaus, at least not Children of the Abyss. Therefore the colleges are for the greater part only for the chosen and elect.

"States levy taxes, and philanthropists levy glory, by erecting, establishing and maintaining colleges for the few and fortunate. Meanwhile the many and unfortunate are neglected.

Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Rockefeller and others have begun wrong. They are cultivating the Tree of Knowledge at the top by spraying the leaves, while the roots are perishing in unfertilized soil. This is contrary to all sound principles of arboriculture. First, a sound root. Then a sound tree. Begin at the bottom."

But this would hardly suit our academic friends, the university professors, because, if the conviction expressed by the editor of the Republic should be generally accepted by the public, it would inevitably reduce the appropriations for the "universities" in order to supply the money to the much-needed education for the children of the people.

Are Conditions Improving in our Schools? They are, mainly because there have appeared educators who have had the moral courage to tell the truth and point out the defects. The "slump" in education, which was so marked a feature of the last decade or two, was produced by the introduction of various fads in our schools, such as Kindergartens, learning to read without spelling (the "phonetic" or

But let Dr. Arthur Twining Hadley, president of Yale University, tell us about this (from an interview published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 7, 1907):

"We have introduced all through our schools a good many Kindergarten methods and a good many studies which are of the nature of play. . . . . When these play studies begin to be valued for their own sake there is trouble. There was a time when we had a good deal of that trouble. There was a generation of boys and girls who could not spell or make a sum come out right, or accept the responsibilities of hard school work of any kind. Fortunately the worst of this period has passed. Our boys to-day spell better and work harder, and have more intellectual responsibility than they did five or ten years ago.

"There was a noticeable deterioration, however, from about the year 1895 to 1902. It was then that American colleges got their first crops from the Kindergartens of the country. The students were deficient in spelling and the use of English. The first Kindergartens were extreme in their methods. They are improving, I am glad to say, and are no longer open to serious criticisms."

If we will have patience to wait a few years longer, we will find that conditions in our grammar schools will be so changed that "one year in high school" will not be needed to improve on present conditions.

Do the Universities Serve for the Greatest Good of the Public, or For the Greatest Good of Themselves?

Prof. John R. Kirk, president of the State Normal School at Kirksville, Mo., answers this question in the St. Louis Republic for June 23, 1907, as follows:

"There are trusts and monopolies in education as elsewhere. The big universities seek to focus all energies upon higher education (so-called) and to bend all things below them to their own purposes. They are organized and firmly knit together. They know one another well. They are mighty monopolists. We need universities but they ought not to be in abnormal relation to other things. They make our school system top-heavy. "In New England and to the north of us the universities exploit all education and force all public schools to become special preparatory schools for the universities. Nearly every university supports a teachers' agency, composed of faculty men, and called the 'committee on positions and recommendations.' One member of the committee is a traveling agent called 'high school inspector.' He represents this bureau. He fixes high school courses of study, watches for vacancies, in a large measure controls the appointment of high school teachers and strives to concentrate the attention of high school students upon the university. "It is an open secret that the so-called 'small colleges' hitherto one of our main reliances in American education, is to be throttled and driven out."

That some of our formerly independent colleges of pharmacy have been compelled to succumb as independent schools, and to seek affiliation with universities, is to be regretted for the sake of pharmacy itself; but---'tis true; and pity 'tis, 'tis true."

Should Colleges of Pharmacy be University Departments? The majority of our state "universities," even those that are not really universities at all, try to maintain the old academic ideals and traditions that have been handed down to us from generation to generation, from the times when "education" was supposed to be the exclusive privilege of the leisure classes.

A rational modern idea of the relation of schools to each other in a proper system of education, is somewhat as follows:

Be it admitted for argument's sake that the way through high school to the academic higher institutions is the best way; as long as high schools are not more generally available, or of more satisfactory educational value than at present, it ought not to be the only way to enter professional colleges or universities. When universities introduce "departments" that really belong to the secondary group of schools, as for instance, departments of pharmacy, the latter do not thereby become real university departments, but should be considered as secondary schools, like the high schools; as equivalents, collaterals or alternatives of the high schools; and it should not be necessary to go through high school, or to go to high school at all, as a preliminary to a business or trade education.

Pharmacy schools for drug-clerks and retail druggists are essentially technical trade or business schools; they rank with high schools and not above high schools; they are alternatives for high schools and not legitimately university departments at all.

Is This a Rational Explanation of the Relation of the Pharmacy School to General Education.

Dr. Arthur Twining Hadley, in the interview already referred to, answers this question:

"I certainly do not think that everybody ought to have a colege, or even a high school education. But it seems to me a mistake to separate boys into those who propose to go into business or professions as though that were a natural and fundamental division. I believe that every boy whose parents have the necessary money should go on with his general education as long as the opportunities for culture and the ideals of public spirit which it inculcates appeal to him. The instant that appeal ceases to have force let him begin a technical course which will lead him to his work as soon as possible. When the culture motive stops, the money motive must come in. But I know many men in trades who would have gotten the fullest profit out of a college education, and some men in commercial and professional life with whom the time spent in college or in high school was pretty largely thrown away."

In other words, if a boy or girl has taste for academic culture and ambition to go through high school or further, he or she should do so if the parents can afford to pay for it; but if, for either of two reasons, lack of inclination or lack of money, they cannot go to high school, let them go direct to schools that will teach them the trade or business they intend to follow. In this sense, a college of pharmacy or a business college for book-keepers, stenographers, telegraphers, etc., or a manual training school for engineers, mechanics, electricians, draughtsmen, chauffeurs, etc., is not in the ascending line in academic education, but collateral or parallel with the high school.

This does not mean that men who aspire to the highest positions in these respective callings will not do well to complete a full academic course, but merely that the rank and file, the overwhelming majority of those who intend to follow these callings, do not need the academic training to become efficient, competent tradesmen and business men.

Should all Who Want to Become Pharmacists go to Colleges of Pharmacy?

From the selfish standpoint of a professor in such a school, I might be tempted to say "yes" to this question; but from a broader, fairer standpoint of honesty the most that can be said is, that all who can afford to

do so would find a college training a great help to success in life. Every boy or girl who enters pharmacy as an apprentice should make it the ultimate aim, to get a college education, if possible. But it should not be made absolutely obligatory.

The president of Yale University said:

"Desirable as it is in all respects, a college education may cost too much. It is not worth the surrender of one's self-regard or self-reliance. A mother and her daughters deprive themselves of the necessaries of life, go hungry, perhaps, as well as shabby, that a son and brother may stay in college four years. An education is too dear at such a sacrifice. The duty of a son and brother is to help his mother and sisters, if they need it. A college course at the expense of their physical welfare is a hardship on them and a positive injury to the student."

Fortunately the boy who finds himself in this predicament can make his way in the world by application to study without going to college. The commonsense question should be: Has he learned to know a certain subject? The academic question would be: Has he learned it in high school in a certain number of academic units of eight months' work of not less than four forty-minute periods each week?

Thousands and tens of thousands of young people who cannot spare the time to learn things in the academic way, have found the correspondence schools the ladders by which they have risen to success. No laws ought ever to make it impossible for such youths to climb.

The Attendance at Our Universities.

In the following table I quote the attendance from the various states at the seventeen most prominent universities of our country, as given in Science, July 26, 1907. The list is not quite fair, because it includes some state universities while omitting others, thus making the attendance from some states whose universities are not included unduly small, as compared with that from states whose universities are included. On the other hand, the state universities so included in the list are really universities, with more than local reputations, while many, if not all of the state universities not included are not really "universities" but are only called so.

The first column shows how many students from each state attend the universities; the second column shows the population of the states (1900 census), and the third column shows approximately how many persons out of every 100,000 attended the universities in the year 1906-1907:

it will not be conducted with mainly this end in view. The high school will not merely be the means to an end in education, but it will itself be the aim and end of the education of the people, and its relation to the universities will be only an incidental phase. From the grammar schools, when perfected by the many able men who are now laboring with this problem, the pupils will pass to the high schools, academies, seminaries, the manual training schools, the colleges of business and trades, agricultural schools, etc., and the millions of the people will consider their education (as far as schools are concerned) completed when they have gone through one of these.* Only the few will go from the high school to the higher schools, and I am not sure that the way to the latter will always continue to be necessarily through the high schools. Will Colleges Continue to Depend on High Schools for Students? Will a High School Education Always Continue to be a Prerequisite for Entrance to Colleges and Universities?

I have already stated my belief that technical trade and business schools should not demand such a prerequisite; many of them do not, and others which do so now, will no doubt discontinue to do so, ere long.

Whatever of high school work is necessary for their students to know, for the proper understanding of the trade or business to which they are devoted, these colleges will have to teach themselves.

In a valedictory address to the 1907 class of the Syracuse (N. Y.) University, Dr. Andrew S. Draper, the Commissioner of Education for the State of New York answered the above question as follows:

"The American Colleges will be obliged to work in accord with the overwhelming number of universities, colleges and secondary schools taken together. They will have to accept students who can do their work and who want to do it, without so much reference to how or what they have studied somewhere else. The western boys and girls say that under the accrediting system by which institutions are examined more than students, it is easier to get into western than into eastern universities, but that once in, it is hard to stay in a western university, while one who gets into an eastern university can hardly fail to be graduated, if he will be polite to the professors and pay the term bills. And the western people say that their way is best; that everyone must have his chance; that at least his chance is not to be taken away upon a false premise; that he if he 'flunks out' after having had his chance it is his fault and no one is going to worry about it; and that it is better to regard the graduation standards and apply them to four years' work that the faculty must know all about than to make a fetish of entrance requirements and have so much ado about prior work, about which they can know very little at best.

"It is all worth thinking about. I am not a westerner; I am thoroughly a New Yorker. But I am for the open, the continuous and the smooth road from the primary school to the university and for every one having his chance without any likelihood of his losing it upon a misunderstanding or a hazard.

"Our democracy is developing a new kind of civilization; our system of common schools, primary and secondary, has brought forth a type of advanced schools peculiar to the country. Institutions that would prosper may better recognize the fact. The universities that would thrive must put away all exclusiveness and dedicate themselves to universal public service. They must not try to keep people out; they must help all who are worthy to get in. It is not necessary that all these institutions shall stand upon exactly the same level; it is necessary that each shall have a large constituency;

"It is imperative that all shall value the man at his true worth and not reject him because his preparation has lacked an ingredient which a professor has been brought up to worship." (Italics mine.)

It is to be regretted that the Conference of Pharmaceutical Faculties thinks of introducing the obsolescent academic prerequisite of high school attendance just when the leading educators of our country are awakening to the newer requirements, finding that the traditional academic prejudices are not as essential as they were once believed to be; just when educators commence to realize that high school attendance may be a meaningless formality and technicality when compared with the worth of the prospective student himself.

Let us cut loose from the fetters and the traditions of the dying past and join in the liberal educational movement so well described by Chancellor Winfield Scott Chaplin, in his address at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Washington University, on June 20, 1907, in St. Louis.

"Entrance to Washington University is easy, the only requirement being that the student is prepared to profit by the instruction of its teachers. Its degree is based neither on age, nor sex, nor time of study, but on work and advancement. Its rules are few, its privileges many. It has but a single aim-to stimulate mental growth."

An Apothecarie's Oath.-The Journal Medical de Bruxelles citing the Gazette de Gynecology, refers to a case before the criminal tribunal of the Cour de Cassation, in which the point at issue was whether it was allowable for physicians and pharmacists to enter into partnership.

Maitre Momard, representing the affirmative, showed that the profession of pharmacist had been from remote times a dependent of that of medicine, and in support of this view cited a curious oath of the fourteenth century, which used to be taken by the apothecaries in those days. The oath is as follows:

"I swear not to malign any of my former masters, physicians, pharmacists or others, whatever they may be, to uphold as far as in me lies, the honor, glory, ornament, and majesty of medicine, not to disclose to idiots and ingrates their secrets and mysteries, to do nothing rashly, without the counsel of physicians or in the hope of gain; to disown and to avoid, like the plague, the disreputable and penurious methods of practice now followed by charlatans and dabblers in alchemy, to the great disgrace of the magistrates who tolerate them. May the Lord prosper me as I observe these conditions.