experience of ten years as dean of one of our western colleges has led him to believe that fraternal organizations may be valuable agencies in matters of discipline, as they can exercise a wholesome influence over, at least, their own members. Doubtless every college officer has seen the wisdom of utilizing these organized forces. Thru this co-operation with the students, much may be done toward the establishment of a more wholesome set of regulations for conduct on the athletic field, and in the matter of elevating the standard of authorship of papers in the classroom.

The writer is convinced that indolence and general dissipation of mental power are responsible for many of the evils above mentioned. Laziness. weakens one morally as well as mentally; a loafer is incapable of ethical growth because his mental fiber is too dormant to assimilate moral nourishment; vigorous, persistent work of any sort begets concentration, self-reliance, and tenacity of purpose, all of which have a moral import. The principal value of athletics lies in the fact that nothing but the student's best efforts are tolerated on the field; such efforts have a reflex psychic influence of incalculable worth. A considerable percentage of our students do not go to college, but are sent; they straggle into the institution with no serious intentions of work; as a rule they come from opulent homes, dress attractively, and flit about as society leaders; their example is deleterious to students of laudable intentions who are often thwarted from their course by these so-called society leaders. A large body of the students yield to the dissipations of loafing and of social life, neglect their studies, and then come up for examination unprepared, where the temptation for deception is strong. Three-fourths of the cheating in the classroom is, doubtless, created by a lack of preparation to meet assigned tasks.

Finally, let me say that the ultimate solution of this problem lies with the faculty itself, for just as the foundation of the house asserts itself all the way from cellar to garret, so does the character of the faculty limit and determine the atmosphere in which the student lives. "As is the teacher so is the school," is an old proverb from whose truth we cannot escape. Philip of Macedon once wrote to the great teacher Aristotle saying, "I thank the gods profoundly for giving me a son to inherit the splendid fortunes I have gained, but I thank them more profoundly that they have given me that son in the lifetime of the great teacher, Aristotle, who alone can teach him how to maintain and extend his splendid inheritance." The infamous Nero caused his beloved teacher Seneca to be put to death because, as he said, "I hear at every step of my bloody career, his gentle, luring words in my ears." He thought that if the voice of Seneca were stilled in death, this would arrest its disturbing warnings; but found that the admonitions of a great teacher, even tho the voice be silent, live on. If this be the force of a teacher, how important that our faculty be made up of men whose lives are worthy of such a place in ours. Many of our instructors not only lend nothing to the uplift of the moral atmosphere of the institutions served, but rather detract from it. There is scarcely a college

where there are not petty factions in which jealousy, selfishness, and unlawful ambition lead them into measures to satisfy personal ends. The student-body soon learns of these disgraceful conditions and are, many of them, drawn into the unholy cliques to lend their aid to the contention. An atmosphere of general dissension is soon created and students, following the example of faculty, acquire the habit of gratifying unlawful ambition at any cost. A teacher's power is infinitely more in what he is, than what he teaches. "How can I hear what you say," said Emerson, "when what you are is continually thundering in my ears?" It is this contact of student life with that of the faculty that counts for more than all else in the morals of our institutions. Really the strongest lessons that we teach are the lessons we do not teach, but those that emanate from our personality. As the apostles at Emmaus felt their hearts burn within them as Christ spoke, so the student feels the life of a great, noble, and sympathetic teacher. History is replete with examples of such teachers, among them Thomas Arnold of Rugby stands prominently. The secret of Arnold's marvelous power lay not in his superior academic training, but in the fact that his heart throbbed with greatness and goodness which reached out, touched, and molded the lives of his boys, whose sports and studies he shared. Mary Lyon of Mt. Holyoke, by her consistent life, ever held before her young women the ideals of a pure, noble womanhood; so completely were these ideals ingrained in the lives of these students that they reflected them everywhere they went in after life. It is this subtle influence of heart upon heart, and soul upon soul that counts for ethics in the college halls, without which all formal instruction is worthless. Such has been the influence of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Aquinas, Erasmus, Savonarola, Pestalozzi, Arnold, Mary Lyon, and a galaxy of others who have lived and taught down thru the ages. With such teachers, the ethical life of our colleges will revive and send out such a moral force as will eliminate the evils of the commercial, political, and social world against which legislation is now directed.

CARE OF FRESHMEN IN LARGE UNIVERSITIES

ROBERT J. ALEY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON

The great interest in higher education by the state has resulted in a number of large and strong institutions. The commendable philanthropy of some of our wealthy citizens has greatly increased the strength and wealth of numerous privately endowed universities. The growing interest of the state and the increasing philanthropy of wealth will soon give us larger, stronger, and better schools of higher learning. The big university is a permanent factor in our educational development. Its problems are many and must be faced bravely. The one that cries for immediate attention is the care of the freshmen.

The small college with its attendance of a few hundred has rendered service of untold value. No friend of education is insensible either to its past worth or its present importance. It has planted the truth and held aloft the torch of

learning by sacrifices and with a devotion that must always claim the admiration of the world. Its endowment in money and its richer endowment, the devotion of its alumni, insure its permanency. It will continue to be a molding and uplifting influence in education. Its history and its work will ennoble because of its spirit of devotion and sacrifice.

The great university and the small college are each strong. The large one with its wealth may furnish libraries, laboratories, and famous research investigators as well as superior teachers. It can offer the student a wider touch with men and life, and thus give a more cosmopolitan education. The small college may give the opportunity of close personal contact between student and professor. It can, because of its small student body, make its life approximate very close to that of the family. The president and his faculty may know personally all the students and thus be able to assist each one in the friendly way that close acquaintance makes possible. The small college has great strength in its wise and unselfish devotion to the individual. The great university in its struggle to keep a material equipment adequate for the ever-increasing number of students has forgotten, at least in part, the needs of the individual. All great schools were once small. In their greatness the source of youthful strength should not be forgotten.

In any study of our educational problems, it must be remembered that the conditions are American, not German. Too often the American school is modeled after the German type. The American freshman is not the equivalent of the first-year student in the German university, either in scholarship or age. The German student has the advantage of at least two full years of very rigid discipline. Even with this advantage the freedom of the university is frequently too much for him. The failures are numerous, frequently being as high as one-third the total number entering. The American entering student is merely a freshman and in no sense ready for the bewildering freedom and utter lack of care that characterizes the German type of university. In Germany the equivalent of our freshman is still in the Realschule, or the Gymnasium, under very close personal care and subjected to most rigid discipline. The American university problem is to find means by which the desirable freedom of the university may be properly united with discipline and personal, individual care for students during at least the first two years of their college life. In most small colleges this problem does not exist, mainly because it has been kept solved. The large college must solve it rightly, or its ascendency is in danger.

No class of students deserves, or needs, so much care as the freshmen. They are the raw material from which upper classmen and alumni are made. The university's first interest should be with them. In all great business enterprises high-priced skill is devoted to saving and utilizing the raw material. If this is necessary when dealing with dead matter, it is certainly far more necessary when dealing with young men and women while they are in the rawmaterial stage. For their care the university should spare no necessary

expense. They need good teaching. They must have it if the interests begun in their high-school work are to be continued and new ones formed. The young doctor fresh from the research work for his thesis, or the fellow hearing classes on the side while working for his degree are hardly the men to lead and inspire freshmen. Too often the university employs teachers for the firstyear classes who could neither secure nor hold places in a good secondary school.

the quality of the last year's The freshman is simply the

In grade work it has been recognized for years that the primary room must have a superior teacher. Poor work there has bad effects that extend throughout the whole grade course. High-school men are beginnng to see that the critical period in their work is the first year. Unless the work of the first year is of superior quality, the leakage is great and work is not of the high grade that it should be. primary child and the first-year high-school child grown older, but not much different. Upon his entrance into college the freshman finds himself in a world as new, strange, and bewildering as confronted him four years earlier when he crossed the threshold of the high school for the first time, or as met his wide-eyed gaze twelve years before when with two score other little sixyear-olds he became for the first time a school boy. Much educational progress has been from above downward. In the treatment of freshmen the upper school should learn from those below it. It is certain that when the university gives the same careful thought to the care of its beginners as is now given by the two schools below it to their beginners, the lot of the freshman will be greatly improved and the whole student life enriched.

The first big element in the care of freshmen is money. If there is not money enough to provide for research work and for freshmen care, there should be no hesitancy in devoting the money to the latter cause. Of course the board of trustees should secure ample means for both purposes. Money should be spent freely to secure good teachers. It is not enough to secure at a large salary a great scholar and a superior teacher for the head of the department. All the men who give instruction in the department should be scholars and more than that, they should be inspiring teachers. Such men cost money. Secondary schools recognize their value and are picking them up at salaries much greater than the universities have been accustomed to pay. The pleasant fiction that there is greater honor in teaching in a college than in a high school is rapidly passing away and it will soon be impossible to get college teachers of first-rate quality except by paying first-rate salaries. For the best results it is very desirable that the teaching-force of a department have considerable permanency. Experience gives a point of vantage that the new man must gain at the expense of his students. For permanence in the force of a department there must be something more tangible than mere loyalty to the institution. Salaries must be made higher. The distance between the salary of the head of the department and the men who do the teaching in the department must be lessened. Five thousand dollars to the head and a

thousand dollars to the teacher in the department is a disparity that will produce dissatisfaction and result in inferior work.

The large university should make all its positions sufficiently attractive to secure and hold strong men. When the large university makes its instructors and assistant professors of as good quality as the professors in the small college, it has successfully met one of the strong arguments against size. If a student is sure of contact with a teacher either in the large or small school, the deciding factors in his choice of a school will be material equipment, chance of acquaintance with men and his future purpose in life. He will no longer choose the small college merely because it offers opportunity for personal contact with strong

men.

A freshman class of fifty is a pitiable sight. A freshman class of one hundred and fifty or more is a spectacle to make the gods weep. Such spectacles may be seen in many of our large universities. Men are individual even when they are freshmen. They cannot be successfully managed in large crowds. These young people are fresh from the secondary schools where they have been. taught in classes of twenty-five or thirty. There they have been held to rigid. requirements and have been accustomed to give an account of their stewardship each day. The transition from the personal care and individual requirements of the high school to the mass-treatment in the freshman class is discouraging, bewildering, and many times ruinous. The mass-work of the large class makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the student to get insight into the subject sufficient to make it interesting. As a result he becomes a hanger-on and all his attempts at work are mere drudgery. His discouragement easily passes into despair and he is likely to become one of that large class labeled "lost and unaccounted for." The institution, large or small, that is compelled to care for its freshmen in classes of more than thirty ought to reduce attendance or go out of business. The large freshman class takes the time and money of the student without the possibility of giving value received in return. No university ever properly meets its duty till it employs a teaching-force large enough to make small classes possible. Here, again, the proper care of freshmen cannot occur without the expenditure of money. A large teaching-force of strong men is indispensable if many students are to be cared for so that leakage and failure shall be kept low.

The freshmen need good teaching. They will not be properly cared for until they have it. Critics say that the poorest teaching in the world is in the colleges. A visit to some freshman classes will cause one to believe that the criticism is half true. That there is far too much poor teaching we must all admit. Although there is much good teaching in all the colleges, there is not yet enough of it to counteract the bad. The establishment of schools of education in the colleges has done much and will do more to make college teaching better. The increasing demand from all schools below the colleges. for teachers with professional preparation for their work must finally cause the colleges to look for more qualifications than scholarship when they employ