By DEXTER BENNETT, Wyoming and Oriel, '24

[EDITOR'S NOTE. The following excerpts are from a letter, written March. 17, which arrived too late for the April number.]

T

HE O. U. D. S. King Lear met with a qualified praise, which perhaps in view of the undertaking was praise indeed. It was

a studied presentation, displaying craftsmanship of a high order. The setting, the grouping, the theatrical effects generally, were managed with that superlative skill which one has a right to expect from a producer such as Komisarjevsky.

Torpids were more tumultuous even than usual, what with high water and the storms of winter. On the fourth day two boats paddling to the start were sunk under the willows by the violence of wind and wave, and the races were postponed. Then the day following there occurred another catastrophe, due rather to the violence of the oarsmanship, when three crews collided at the finishing post and went down gloriously. In the end it was Merton who emerged triumphant. They wrested the headship from Univ. on the first day, and succeeded in keeping it throughout the week, though they were closely pressed later by Balliol who are now in second place, and by Magdalen who are third.

It must be acknowledged that so far this term Cambridge has given Oxford no cause for celebration, for they have come off victors in hockey and lacrosse and boxing. Yet the term has not lacked revellers. The Bullingdon Club succeeded in breaking enough windows in Peckwater Quad to vex slightly the Tory conscience of the Daily Mail. Bump suppers folowed after Toggers, of course, and the night was hideous. Nor has any other opportunity for festivity been passed by idly. Balliol did not fail to observe their victory in the Inter-college Sports, and no doubt the observances of Brasenose, who have won both the Soccer and the Rugger finals, will bring the term to a hilarious close.

The senior members of the University meanwhile have been giving attention to matters more grave. For one thing, the problem of lodg

ings has now become very acute, and no ready solution has presented itself. The future of the women's colleges has also come in for considerable discussion lately. Many urge that further limitations of scope and membership should be placed upon them. Petitions and manifestoes are drawn and signed, and each side has its eminent supporters. Whatever happens, there seems to be no thought of increasing the number of women students. Now that these colleges are large enough to ensure their stability, it is maintained that they seek to go no farther.

The Critical Spirit: Oxford and Harvard

H.

P. PERKINS (Massachusetts and Queen's, '23), now Assistant and Tutor in Philosophy at Harvard, has in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin a series of articles which are of special interest in connection with the new scheme of undergraduate tutorial instruction that Harvard has adopted. The first article, dealing with Concentration, is in the issue of February 24; the second, dealing with Individual Instruction, in that of March 10. A bare synopsis of the main line of argument and a few quotations from the more striking conclusions must here suffice, but the monograph will be found well worth reading in its entirety.

"Saturation with a few books" is the point with which Perkins begins as the first thing indispensable to the development of the critical faculty. Any rapid survey fails to teach, for it fails to force the student really to think about the subject. "Thinking is partly the result of belief": it involves a definite taking of sides in regard to some conviction that is capable of "arousing certain objections and on its own account belligerently repudiating at least some other attitudes." But to acquire the mental habit and the specific knowledge necessary to the formation of anything resembling a real belief "takes time, much time"—particularly in view of the bad and scattered intellectual background that the American freshman brings from school. Perkins finds that the present Harvard tutorial arrangement allows nothing like enough time for the attainment of the objects it aims at.

"The result is that the tutor has to create a basis for discussion on his own account, and take the student with him as best he may. The student does not have time to contribute anything. And if he is to be trained to use well the time which is given him he must have frequent practice and come to the tutorial more often. If we cannot do this we ought to give up the tutorial altogether. At present it is just a further distribution of the student's energies, something more to prevent him from doing any one thing thoroughly enough so that he is brought to think about it." He pleads for a more modest curriculum, "including fewer subjects and spending more time on a small number of central

attitudes." These central attitudes are the focal points of culture, from which, when they have been made definitely a part of the thinker, his mind will naturally radiate into different directions and begin to synthesize its miscellaneous interests.

To acquire any such control of a great subject (e.g., Plato) that he can begin really to think about it would take a full year for the average American undergraduate, but the most he can get by the present system is one-fifth of a year. "I am inferring from the fact that the more highly developed Englishman is obliged to do nothing else for six months or so before he begins to reflect on the subject in a systematic way. On this side of the Atlantic a year really means a fifth of a year, as the man has three other courses and his tutorials. If we accept the fact that the Englishman possesses much better tools and has probably heard of Plato before he begins, a fifth of a year is a very modest estimate for us. Of course the Englishman spends more than six months on Plato if he does him at all, and passes well beyond the stage to which I refer. But it is about six months, I have noticed, before he begins to think about the subject. Anything less than a year is simply and literally thrown away. What is done might be regarded as an introduction. But it does not make the student think, and thus for him it is so abstract and dead that he does not remember what is said."

The conclusion is that a good deal of the present "distribution" should be eliminated, and the number of "attitudes" considered within the field of concentration reduced. "Would this sort of thing produce one-sided graduates?" Quite the reverse, he thinks, for "No man who thinks is one-sided, no man who does not think is many-sided. Thinking, again, is impossible unless one take an attitude with enough seriousness to want to test it, and for that one must take time, and concentrate."

"Individual instruction," the second paper begins, "is the only kind of teaching which can foster systematic study." Freshmen require more of it than any other students and need it in short and frequent applications. Perkins would have them begin concentrating in a single subject at once and report for half-hour individual conferences with their tutor thrice a week, till they learn how to criticize their own reflections. While the tutorial conference "is on the edge of the academic circle of activities, it cannot provide any systematic criticism. It cannot acquire the momentum which is necessary to build up a habit

of mind in the student. It does not get under the student's skin often enough, and there are too many intervals of appallingly loose thinking in the hours spent preparing for courses." "Our background is weaker than the one we find in the Englishman coming up to Oxford. It takes us longer to digest what we read, given the same native powers. Hence we should spend more time in preparing for our tutorials." Time and tutorials. This, Perkins implies, should be the cry of all who desire education. "Without such a program and a complete release from preparation for courses, the tutorial system is not worth carrying on, as it merely disperses energies and prevents any thorough work from being done anywhere."

This is fairly strong talk and may sound radical to the professors who feel that undergraduates have already achieved more than sufficient release from preparation for their courses; but the thesis is both logical and forcibly presented. It will be very interesting to observe how the testimony of men like Perkins concerning the effects of Harvard's thus far mild application of the Oxford system will ultimately influence the Harvard curriculum. One truth which seems already to be emerging at Harvard, as I believe it has emerged at Princeton, is that a little Oxford is a dangerous thing. Another, more piquant and more important, is that serious comparison of the methods in vogue at the so-called home of lost causes with those of our most up-to-date universities comes near convicting the latter of wasteful inefficiency. This is not to say that a new Oxford can be built in a day, or that our American web of compulsory lecture courses, fractional examinations, distribution and elective freedom should be scrapped over night. I think the latter still has a good deal of wear and elasticity in it; but the challenges that Perkins makes certainly reveal its rents, and are enough to cause a headache in most administrative offices. Here, to conclude, are a few of his teasers:

"Individual instruction and concentration in small fields, centering about the great books, are the only means for developing a lifelong habit of careful reflection. This is not a training for 'research,' or in any special way a preparation for the graduate school; it is essentially a program for living more successfully in any environment."

"A man who has been educated properly is more teachable in any particular field than his uncultivated fellow. The former has been taught to see the point when some one else shows it to him, and he has