and women. We must not make a mistake in this critical time. If the great, fundamental rights and privileges, the story of whose development runs strongly in all of America's story, are right, it would be nothing short of a crime against humanity-such a mistake as German Kulturists have made

-to distort them in the direction of flamboyant patriotism. Furthermore, as pointed out by some recent writers, such as Charles Altschul in his book, The American revolution in our school textbooks, our books encourage bias by their incompleteness and superficiality. It almost goes without saying that superficiality and incompleteness of statement have led and will continue to lead to very inaccurate impressions and even to prejudice.

We need only the truth-the truth in the history of our dealings with other nations and their dealings with us. We need only the truth in the wonderful story of American life in all of its past phases revealed in such rich, picture-making detail that children can see and understand and re-live American life as it was. All history is true. If a story is not true it is not history. In such history as this lies one of the greatest factors in teaching patriotism. Not a small part of the responsibility of preserving the best in America for America and for the world lies upon the shoulders of the writer and teacher of history. Will they fail to see it, or seeing it cowardly shirk it?

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN

WALTER B. DAVISON

III

JUNIOR COLLEGES IN CALIFORNIA

An educational development, now in progress in California' sanctioned and encouraged by the State University, is of distinct interest; it involves the creation of a large number of junior colleges in extension of the high school system of the

state.

The idea of the junior college is by no means entirely new, and a brief survey of its earlier history may indicate wherein the present situation in California coincides with efforts previously made, wherein it involves new problems. Some fourteen years ago there was initiated under the leadership of President Harper of Chicago, and the presidents of other state universities of the Middle West, a movement to throw off the ballast of their two lower classes, freshman and sophomore, on the ground that they desired to free their institutions of work that was essentially of secondary school type; it was urged that many high schools were able to carry on this work quite as effectively with their existing organization. At that initial meeting, and again somewhat later in a detailed article,1 the present writer recorded his objections to the scheme, and in the light of recent developments he finds that his criticism still applies.

The movement in the Middle West has not been successful. It disregarded the nature of the teaching that was appropriate to the pupils' stage of maturity, and it failed to weigh the qualifications of our secondary teachers. It assumed, furthermore, as fundamental the axiom that work of the freshman and sophomore stage in college is carried on with the teaching methods that prevail in the secondary school. Such an assumption is not at all well founded, for the early college 1 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, xxx, p. 488 ff.

work involves a type of procedure distinctly in advance of any effort that is within reach of the secondary school. The college instructor of freshmen and sophomores creates for the presentation of his special subject a technique that is peculiar and specific in character. It calls for something more than the relatively elementary stage of insight which we meet in the secondary pupil. Wisely administered it is "secondary work in a stage of transition to the liberal aspects of a higher stage of information, and as such may be made culturally most effective."2 On the other hand, with a quality all its own it differs from the comprehensive, all-around survey that is appropriate to university instruction, a survey that leads either to a philosophic outlook on the bearings of a subject in its entirety, or to a specific professional application of the subject to a vocational end.

We have developed thru the last century a technique of college methods that corresponds to the greater maturity of our students in point of mental development and that invites them to a larger outlook in the matter of specific information. This technique differs from the sequence of intellectual advance that is practised in foreign schools, but we have no reason to discard it. It is well to remember that its distinctive features have imprest some foreign scholars like Michael Sadler and Paulsen, and have given rise in their minds to the query whether the conduct of our college work does not represent a type worthy of serious consideration. In college courses that are properly planned and successfully developed the instructors are working for an ideal that is divergent from the goal of secondary school work; they call for something more in their pupils than mere responsiveness to a plan of study that progresses in carefully elaborated stages from point to point. They have a right to demand a certain intellectual resilience in their pupils, a capacity to undertake independent observation, to reach out into the sphere of constructive and individual combination-in plain words, the capacity to think logically, to strive for the underlying philosophy in the subject in hand.

* EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, xxx, p. 493.

Now without any disparagement of our secondary teachers, this type of approach lies outside their province; they have not qualified for this kind of work, and we have no right to demand it of them. In fact, the successful performance of the task peculiar to the secondary school stage calls for a method diametrically opposed to this tendency. And the wise teacher will not tempt his pupils to generalize on a basis of inadequate elementary knowledge. Our secondary pupils are engaged on the a b c's of each subject that enters into their course of study; we are dishonest if we attempt to disguise this fact. Our secondary school courses in mathematics, in Latin, in history, in science, deal with the veriest elementary information, and it is an evidence of mental vagueness, it leads to hopeless superficiality, if we attempt to carry our pupils beyond their depth at this initial stage. Every college instructor knows of the desperate inaccuracy of his students, due in particular to haziness in initial concepts. It ought to satisfy a teacher completely if thruout the secondary school course he has laid conscientiously and effectively the foundations for his pupils' further advance. As to his personal ambition, let him recall, “Act well your part; there all the honor lies."

The suggestion of prolonging our high school curriculum by the addition of two college years as part of a secondary school course involves us in difficulties of still another kind. Our secondary school organization is even now on the eve of a radical transformation; the scheme of a four-years' high school course is rapidly giving way to the more rational arrangement of a six-year course that reaches down into the last two years of the elementary school. And with this change we shall gain time and opportunity for more careful guidance of our pupils, for more competent teaching activity. There is every prospect that within these six years of the reorganized secondary school we shall be able to give our pupils a satisfactory foundation in certain topics which we have been wont to consider the basis of intellectual equipment; teachers will hope that they may now really accomplish what under former conditions, in the state of intel

lectual congestion that prevailed, could not be properly done.

Why then superimpose on these six years of secondary school life two further years of quasi-college character? The homogeneity of a well-balanced secondary school course is threatened by this new complication; its efficiency I am inclined to question even from the administrative side. It would mean that under one administrative head and usually in one building there would be grouped, for a course covering eight years, pupils ranging from incipient adolescence to maturity. Now to students of such divergent ages an identical code of procedure is not applicable. The control appropriate to the young and immature would of necessity fetter and hamper the initiative of the mature. Students of foreign school methods have heard much, within the last decade, of the dissatisfaction and insubordination experienced in the upper classes of their secondary schools because of regulations that restrain and chafe.

It has been suggested that this difficulty may be overcome by assigning the last two years, that is those equivalent to freshman and sophomore work, to teachers of college standard, superior to the average secondary school instructor, and that a college atmosphere, as far as method of work is concerned, can thus be maintained. But unless a special body of teachers is appointed for the peculiarly collegiate type of work, the same teacher will be expected to handle his topics now as a college subject, now on secondary school lines. Few are sufficiently adaptable to approach their subject in its various phases equally well from so different an angle.

These are a few of the obvious objections to a system that was suggested mainly in the interests of the higher institutions. It was not because the high schools could more effectively carry out the collegiate work, but because the elimination of freshman and sophomore work seemed to permit the higher institutions to devote themselves more unreservedly to university work, to specialization along vocational lines, and to graduate research work. Convenient it may have appeared thus to disburden the higher institutions of their