First, the assumption that preparation for the liberal at-is college depends upon the study of certain prescribed subjects in the secondary school is no longer tenable. This assumption bas been questioned for some time. Earlier studies threw some doubt upon it. The results of this Study disprove it. Success in college work depends upon something else. Real preparation for college is something much more important and vital than the accumulation of 15 prescribed units.

School and college relations based upon this untenable assumption are neither satisfactory nor sound. The relationship is an unhappy one. Colleges criticize the schools saying that students come to college unprepared for their work, that they are deficient in even the most rudimentary academic skills, that their habits of work are careless and superficial, and that they lack seriousness and clarity of purpose. Schools, on the other hand, charge that colleges regiment students, treat them too impersonally, counsel them inadequately, and fail to stimulate them intellectually. Teachers in secondary schools say that college professors are 1111willing or unable to see the great problems of the high school, thinking of it only as a place of preparation for college and forgetting the school's obligation to the 80 per cent who stop their schooling at or before graduation from high school. Whether these criticisms are warranted or not, they reveal an unsatisfactory relationship. It does not seem that there can be much more happiness in cither group until a sound basis of relationship is established.

The customary relations of school and college are unsound in that emphasis is placed upon outworn symbols---units, grades, rankings, and diplomas. To stand well with its patrons the high school must meet college requirements. If those requirements are not essentials, both school and college are forced into false positions. The college is placed in the position of saying that certain subjects, grades, and units are essential when. it knows that they are not; and the school is placed in the false position of forcing students through work which may be of little value to them.

The conclusion must be drawn, therefore, that the assumption upon which school and college relations have been based in the past must be abandoned. It is evident that the liberal arts college has not examined its work thoroughly and realistically and based on that examination its prescription of what is essential in preparation. This Study has proved that some knowledges and skills heretofore generally assumed to be necessary, are not Deeded. It has established, also, that necessary disciplines of mind and character may be achieved through many other subjects than those formerly assumed to be the only effective ones.

It does not follow that it is useless or impossible to describe what preparation is actually required for success in college. Indeed colleges need to know-teachers, pupils, and parents need to know-what knowledge, what skills, what habits, what attitudes constitute the foundation for satisfactory achievement in college. When these are determined, colleges should then require them for admission; schools could then be intelligent in their important task of preparation.

But this is more easily said than done. The college cannot state what preparation is essential unless it knows its own pin-poses. It must be said here that liberal arts college faculties seldom state clearly what they mean by, liberal or general education. Perhaps they do not know. Individual professors often have clearly defined purposes. Sometimes departments such as English, history, economics have set up goals for their work. Rarely, however, have whole college faculties co-operatively thought their problem through and set forth their purposes and plans.

Although co-operative faculty study of liberal education is not usual in colleges, in some the faculty as a whole is attempting to re-define general education and to revise its work in the light of clearer purpose. One College,² which has been studying this problem seriously, turned last year to the question of preparation for college. Dean Herbert E. Hawkes gives this encouraging report of their deliberations:

A few weeks ago I called a conference of all the instructors of freshmen in Columbia College in order to talk about this important topic. In the course of the conference I asked them what kind of students they really wanted in their courses, what kind of intellectual background, what pattern of preparation, what areas of competency. The replies were interesting. They reported with one accord that they wanted boys who could read with good speed and comprehension, and who knew how to gauge their reading to the various types of material that they were called upon to master. They wanted boys who had a reasonable facility in self-expression, both orally and in writing. So much for English. Then they wanted boys who knew how to tackle a hard intellectual job and carry it through to completion-a boy who had acquired the habit and zest for work. You may call this discipline. Furthermore they wanted boys who knew an idea when they saw one, who were accustomed to dealing with ideas, in short, who had reasonable intellectual maturity.

These three points were mentioned again and again in one form and another. The amazing fact was that very little was said about the specific pattern of subject-matter preparation. If the students had gained these fundamental qualities and attitudes they did not care where they got them. In fact, many of the instructors in the various freshman courses in social studies, in humanities and even in science said that they could not tell from the way in which a boy tool, hold of his college work whether hee had passed this or that entrance examination except insofar as it was reflected in these qualities. To be sure, in the humanities it appeared that the boy who bad good grounding in Latin had a head start in the reading of the Greek and Roman classics that are included in this course. But in this course, those who had received such training could not be distinguished from those who had not after a few weeks, provided they knew how to work. The corresponding fact held true in the sciences.

Here is a college faculty declaring that success in college depends upon skill in the use of the mother tongue, readiness and ability to work hard, and "reasonable intellectual maturity." Similar conclusions have been reached by other faculties. As more colleges re-examine their own purposes and procedures, and as they reconsider the problem of preparation for higher education, agreement may be reached upon some such essentials as those stated by the faculty at Columbia.

To go further and to conduct such co-operative study among many institutions is a most difficult task, as the Thirty Schools have discovered. Yet, if this were done, it would make possible a sound basis of relationship with schools. Until colleges and secondary schools know and agree on what they are trying to do, there is no intelligent way for them to unite their efforts on behalf of those who expect to go to college.

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