I think this conclusion will be reached, that if a student begins his course early enough and continues it uninteruptedly that he will reach that point of requirement which we desire before the age of 18. Of course for students who begin their academic preparation at a later period, the belated class, any set of requirements would seem abnormally high. The question is often asked by college professors, specially those who are somewhat ignorant of the courses in the preparatory schools, what is a youth doing between the ages of five or six and 19, the time when he appears at the institution? We have had an object lesson to-day from the regents' examinations, and I received myself last evening another object lesson in this same connection, and coming as it did before this debate it seemed to be rather significant. An application has come from a young man for admission to Cornell University. This young man held what he called a 70-count regents' certificate. He is a graduate of a small school in the western part of the state, in a town of some 2,000 inhabitants. This certificate covered, beside the common branches, advanced English, English composition, rhetoric, German first and second year, Latin first year, Caesar's Commentaries, Cicero's Orations, Virgil's Eclogues, advanced arithmetic, algebra, plane geometry, plane trigonometry, astronomy, physics, advanced physics, physical geography, botany, physiology and hygiene, Greek history, Roman history, English history, United States history, civics, bookkeeping and drawing. I think that Prof. Emerton would admit that these requirements under the system of substitution would very nearly admit this young man to Harvard College. His age is 14 years and six months. This young man will be obliged to wait upon the farm for 18 months before he is ready for Cornell University at the minimum age of 16 years, and will have plenty of time to get up in Greek. This case seems perhaps exceptional. I find in the same family there are four others, one of whom received the academic diploma at the age of 16 years and two months, another at the age of 15 years and two months. A third member of this family obtained the regents' academic diploma in the following subjects in addition to the preliminary: algebra, American history, physical geography, physiology, rhetoric, plane geometry, civil government, history of England, astronomy, physics, four books of Caesar, six books of Virgil, first year German. The age of this person was 12 years and nine months. This goes to indicate that in some way some persons get this at an age far below the age of admission to the universities. This matter was discussed in the New England meeting of colleges and preparatory

schools last fall very thoroughly, and the following conclusions were reached:

1 That the requirements were not abnormally high.

2 That the academies must dip down into the grammar school course and take their students at an earlier date.

3 That the curriculum of the grammar school must be enriched by introducing the study of modern language at an early period.

This was President Eliot's proposal, that subjects like geometry and possibly algebra might be introduced into those schools. The alternative was to introduce the elective system at a much earlier period. That will be the solution of many of our difficulties; it has been the solution of many of our difficulties in the universities. It is said that there was a plethora in the school curriculum; if we introduce the elective system, plethora of subjects means simply plethora of teachers; that there must be more teachers and smaller classes. Let the elective system begin at an earlier period and what is the difficulty? It is a mere matter of dollars. I suppose this Convocation would not stumble at a question of dollars and cents if there is no intellectual difficulty. We point out the way and the appropriation, we hope, will follow; at least we must hammer away at that idea. One thing about the Harvard requirements is their variety. How may this variety be made easiest for the student? It is a painful process to call on a young man to pass at any one given arbitrary point in his course in all the subjects that he has studied before. Harvard college and other institutions to meet that difficulty have instituted divided examinations, examinations in different subjects to avoid the uncertain double trip which otherwise would be necessary. These are merely local difficulties. It seems to me that the solution of this difficulty lies largely in the system of admission by certificate. That system has its dangers and its evils, but it has this great advantage, that it allows the candidate to take these subjects naturally and normally where they belong. He takes them at the proper year of the course, and in the final year he takes the advanced subjects, and if the head of the school vouches for his scholarship the college accepts him provisionally with a later day of judgment in his course. Another alternative for those who object to the system by certificate would be to lessen the number of subjects, eliminating the minor topics. Harvard College has dropped entrance requirements in arithmetic. Why examine in geography? Why examine in physiology? Yale College has dropped the entrance requirement in English. What if we should examine only in higher mathematics, languages, etc? The cry would be immediately raised, there is no

science. The scientific men of the country are crying out that science should appear among the entrance requirements. This question could be solved by the certificate system.

I should like to call attention to an educational experiment going on in California. The Stanford University has recognized theoretically the equivalency of all subjects that are offered. Any candidate who presents a sufficient quantity is admitted. I do not say that this is the wisest conclusion. It is an experiment which other institutions are watching with great interest, and are glad that they are not called on to make it themselves.

Prof. Adolphe Cohn-I appear here in a double capacity, having had experience not only in Columbia College where I began my American university career and where I now teach, but also in Harvard University, with which I was connected for several years, and with the entrance requirements of which I am sorry to say that I have had much experience. All my college colleagues who are here will sympathize with me, some of them from recent actual experience, when I tell them I am just now out of the drudgery of reading my entrance examination papers.

This question when I first read it on the program of the session, seemed to me as it had to my friend, Prof. Emerton, very strange. I wondered where in the land was situated a college that had abnormally high requirements for admission. I had been under the impression that they had been connected with the one that was said to have the highest requirements, and I had never seen anything abnormally high except the great and broad culture that the freshmen brought with themselves on entering. The interpretation given to the word "abnormal" by Prof. Emerton undoubtedly must be commended by this Convocation to the future editors of dictionaries of the English language. We will translate "abnormally" by "exceptionally"; but the main question was simply the second one that Prof. Emerton took: Are those requirements too high? I may perhaps slightly jar the feelings of some of my hearers if I make here a proposition which to me seems of the greatest importance; it is that there is an essential difference between the standards of primary and secondary education on one side and those of higher education on the other. The standard of primary education is essentially a national standard. Any primary education ought to give to the child that which the country concedes is absolutely necessary to every one of its citizens. In the higher education something quite different is to be done. The standard of higher education

can not be established by each country for itself. It is an international standard. It is through higher education that each country takes its place among the scholarly countries of the whole globe. When a college which gives all the degrees from the B. A. to the Ph. D. receives a young man, the question before us is "Is this young man, if well gifted, well endowed by nature, in such a condition that with our best endeavors we can in six or seven years make him the peer of the scholars of the world of the same age?" Some colleges of this country are doing it. They are doing it and it is a wonder to me when I see the freshmen of the different colleges that they can do it. They are doing very remarkable work in this direction, but to ask them to admit students of a lower grade of development and to do the same work in the same amount of time is to ask them to perform an absolutely impossible task. Together with this request for a lower standard of admission comes the request for advanced requirements for admission to the college course. There must be a solution of the problem. There is an evil. We would not hear all these devoted principals of secondary schools complain of high requirements if there were not an evil somewhere. I must say that looking at the students and looking at the amount of time which is so sparingly given to the secondary school principals for the education of these young men, I am more surprised even with the results they obtain than I am with the results that are reached in college. The evil in my mind lies there. The young boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 17 or 18, at which they enter college, are not encouraged by their families to take a sufficiently seriously view of what I do not hesitate to call their social position. Every occupation in a well ordered community is a public office. The school-boy has his public office; he is a school-boy, just as his father is a lawyer, a banker, a merchant, a professor or farmer. Unfortunately, my experience with boys tells me that they consider everything else their calling except their schooling. This is the secret. I heard one of the members here mention the number of hours which he considered devoted to preparation for college. During my preparation for college I had to give 700 hours of recitation a year to it, and I can assure you that this schooling did not weaken me or my friends physically. We had plenty of time for physical exercise, plenty of time for the natural jollities of a boy's life; but it never came to my mind that the hours spent by us in the secondary schools were taken from our legitimate calling. It never came to our mind that we had a right to enjoy all the good things of life till we had performed our task, till we had acquitted ourselves of our duties to our families and to society. I must say that the

problem seems to me in a way to receive wise solution here. Many of the things that I now hear give me great hope. One of the memSer here present called our attention to the fact that in the secondary schoola Lot simply the boys preparing for ecllege should be maomgås of, but the boys who are not preparing for eclege. Let the prampal of the secondary school try his best to educate as highly as be sap those boys while he has them under his charge and the problem will be solved Let the boys go to college at 18 because their minds are able to work for themselves, and then there will be no need for a college to insist on entrance requirements

The secret of success lies in the attention paid to the teaching of the English language. This is the grandest study in any country of the world, the teaching of the mother tongue. It is the chief study, the one important study, because for a philosophical reason; not because it is the language of the land, but because it is the only link between the different branches that are taught in the school Let not a single lesson in arithmetic or history or Greek or French or German be given that is not also a lesson in English. Let no boy be allowed to use such English as we are ashamed to find in the entrance papers that we have to correct. Only a week ago I had to read a translation from French in which one third of the boys at least wrote "breaking a pane of glass," "braking" and "pain." Let every teacher insist that a boy shall use plain English in the class room as he insists on his having clean hands when he enters therein. Let every exercise, no matter how correct, be returned for rewriting when the English is incorrect, so that when a boy comes to the age of 14 or 15 or 17 he will be as sure of his English as he is of his multiplication table. It is a problem of the family. I am glad to see so many ladies in my presence, so many mothers and future mothers. They have the problem in their hands. Let the schooling begin at home; let no slovenly, incorrect English be used. Let a boy understand that he debases his boyhood when he presents to his instructor in a translation a sequence of words that has no logical sequence, and the entrance requirements of any college will be considered too low and the cause of education will have made as great a progress as is possible.

Willis Boughton, University of Pennsylvania - A large portion of our college gradutes go into the professions. I can speak only of my own profession, which is teaching. Suppose a college president wishes a teacher in any department, and suppose there are two or more candidates; one of them from a small college or a college doing inferior work or a less amount of work than the other, which candi