The ninth annual gathering of teachers of preparatory schools

The ninth annual gathering of teachers of preparatory schools for conference with the college faculty on matters of common interest is announced for .May 13 to is.

The idea of holding such conferences was suggested by two such gatherings at Middlebury College by invitation of the department of Latin of that college. The teachers who went to Middlebury were so enthusiastic in their reports of the profit and pleasure of those meetings that when the department of pedagogy was established at Dartmouth, it was thought wise to make a feature of its work the bringing together every year of the teachers of the schools that were more directly connected with the College, especially those of New Hampshire. The essential characteristics of the conferences were to be two : first, the giving of time enough to each conference to warrant teachers in making the sacrifice of money and effort involved in coming to Hanover; and second, the concentration of the whole attention each year upon some one department of study, so that to the teachers in attendance in any year every hour of the conference might prove profitable. The sessions have been long, from Thursday afternoon to Saturday forenoon, inclusive. In the course of nine years nearly every subject that is presented for admission to college has had its turn for consideration in such a two days' session, with numerous papers and discussions by secondary teachers and members of the faculty. Three sessions, designed chiefly for school principals, have been given to matters outside class-room work : in 1905 the subject of the conference was The Function of the School in Developing Character; in 1908, The Problems of Industrial Education and Physical Culture; this year the discussion will be on the determination and administration of entrance requirements as a whole. It is expected that next year the round of departmental conferences will begin again, the subject being history, the department with which the series was inaugurated.

The College has met all expenses of the conferences except the personal expenses of those in attendance, and has usually secured for a formal address some man eminent in the department that is under consideration. An informal reception is given to the visiting teachers, and every attempt is made to give them the feeling that they are at home at Dartmouth. An especially pleasant feature of the conference of last year was the attendance of the entire teaching force of the Manchester High School. In recent years the annual meeting of the high school teachers of the State of New Hampshire has been merged in the Dartmouth conference, and Superintendent Morrison has given his hearty support and constant assistance. The High Schoolmasters' Club of New Hampshire has also in recent years accepted the invitation of the College to hold their annual dinner in connection with the May conference. The custom now is to entertain the club and all other visiting teachers at dinner at College Hall Friday afternoon, and to have after-dinner speaking by members of the club and their guests. This has added greatly to the social possibilities of the conference.

The result of these annual gatherings has been to bring the faculty into most cordial and helpful relations with the teachers of the preparatory schools, not with principals alone, but with the larger body who are giving the instruction in the class-rooms. Northern New England is so largely a recruiting ground for teachers for the wealthier communities that our teachers form a constantly changing body. The majority of them are young in service, and some are compelled to teach in departments for which they have had no special preparation. The opportunity to discuss the problems of their departments with the older teachers, to learn of the best books and of improved methods, to hear stimulating papers on more advanced subjects in their own field, and to make personal the acquaintance of others who are in similar work, has been thoroughly appreciated. Many teachers have come year after year at large cost of time and money. The gain to the college instructors has been no less. They have come to realize the difficulties in secondary work, to appreciate the ability and devotion of teachers whom they have known before only through an occasional pupil—often not a fair representative of the school,—and they have learned better how to adapt the freshman work to the needs of the entering class. The conferences have done good service also to the older college students who have been looking toward teaching as a profession. Many of them have followed the discussions of the conferences in their special departments.

Just at present, in this age of objections, the American college is enjoying an • unusual amount of criticism. Scarcely a periodical dealing with matters of immediate moment but has something to say concerning the decadence of undergraduates, the decline of faculties, the heterogeneous uselessness of curricula. Careful perusal of the authorities presented leads to all of the following inevitable conclusionsand more : The youth of the land are learning nothing at all; they are learning an excess of the wrong things: too much severe technicality is making them narrow and bigoted; too much easy generality is making them uncertain and flabby minded. As for the college itself, if it grows, it has cast aside its scholarly standards; if it fails to grow, it is assuredly behind the times.

At first thought it appears strange that there should be such universal agreement that something is wrong with our colleges, coupled with such universal disagreement as to just what the wrong is. Later examination discloses the fact that no two critics are expressing the same point of view ; indeed that probably no one critic is twice expressing the same point of view, since no individual or group of individuals has as yet stated a clear conception of what is, or should be, the precise object of a college education.

Criticism that ignores the end and contents itself with abusing the means is not calculated to be helpful. Hence the major part of the discussion thus far produced has been of little value, save as it has served to stimulate thinking that may in time prove to be constructive. At the foundation of such thinking must lie an answer to the question: What is the object of a college education ? Or, to put it more concretely: Granted an average boy of eighteen, ready for college or for business; what is to be the predetermined result of his choosing four years of college before he enters office or factory ?

The return of the athletic season emphasizes anew the growth among undergraduates of intercollegiate neighborliness. Intercollegiate rivalry is a generation or more old, but only of recent years has the average student appeared to realize that his college is not an isolated phenomenon peopled by men of a special and superior type; only recently has he learned that all other colleges do not fall below his standard and are not inhabited by a race little better than barbarians. Nor is this latter-day neighborliness of the type represented in the German university, where the extreme of interuniversity sociability is represented by the Kommers. At this love feast the societies of one university are often the guests of those of a sister institution. Fraternal songs are sung and fraternal sentiments expressed, unlimited quantities of fraternal beer are consumed, and, as a side issue, a few scars may be carried home after a fraternal duel.

The neighborliness of the American student is saner if not less youthful. Occasional athletic migrations, seconded by the ties of the secret fraternities, are making him a man of the intercollegiate world. This has not as yet apparently hurt the delicate balance of college life, but rather made it truer: on the one side, the old extreme individualistic tendency of college loyalty, on the other the broadening atmosphere of the man who knows his college world because he has seen it. A tip of the balance one way would result in isolated stagnation, the other in blase boredom; but let the spirit of neighborliness survive and grow in the midst of college loyalty and no harm can result.

The fact that the approaching Junior Week will be the tenth in the history of the College will call for no special decennial celebration by the undergraduates. To them, what existed before they appeared upon the scene has existed since time began: four years of survival establish traditions as immemorial. It may be doubted, too, whether the sophisticated Juniors of today would look with favor upon a too close inquiry into the crude origins of the event which they now put through with such urbane precision. The history of the Carnival of 1899 will be more interesting fifty years hence, when the remoteness of the period will make it appear, after all, not to be differentiated from the era of the log cabin and the mythical Sachem of the Wah-hoo-wahs. Just now Junior Week is, each year, its own excuse for being. So long as it provides genial skies, fragrant blossoms, the robin's song at twilight, a moon, music, and plenty of good company, who cares whence it came or when ?