THE BANDAR-LOG

A foreigner, attending, in an American university, an assembly of student speakers, will be justified in concluding that the university exists for nothing but so-called "student activities." The real purpose of the university will not be mentioned, for usually our undergraduates live two lives-distinct; one utterly non-academic. The non-academic is for them the real; the scholarly an encroachment. The student who regards the scholarly as paramount is deficient in "allegiance to his university."

Athletics, meanwhile, which should play a necessary part in the physical, and therefore spiritual, development of all students, are relegated to ten per cent of the students. The rest assist on the bleachers. The ninety per cent are killing two birds with one stone. They are taking second-hand exercise; and, by their grotesque and infantile applause, they are displaying what they call their "loyalty."

Those noctes cœnæque deum of history and poetry and philosophical discourse, to the memory of which the older generation reverts with rapture, have faded in this light of common day. In the hurry of mundane pursuit the student rarely halts to read, rarely to consider; rarely to discuss the concerns of the larger life.

President Schurman has recently said that there has been no decline of scholarship in the people's universities, but only in the older institutions of the East, to which rich parents send their sons with the view to the advantages of social position; and that in the people's universities the social standing of students has never cut so much figure as scholarship. The assurance is comfortable; but it obscures the issue. If by "social standing" the president of Cornell means position in the coteries of

wealth, fashion, conviviality, it may be that "social standing" bulks larger in the older university than in the university of the state. But the fact is that, in student esteem, East and West, social standing means no such thing; it means the position achieved by prominence in non-academic or "campus" activities. And in student esteem such prominence cuts a far more important figure than that of either wealth or scholarship. Such prominence has been gaining ground for fifteen years. So long as the social pressure of the university is toward mundane pursuits, it will be vain to expect the student to achieve distinction in that for which the university stands.

This false standard of prominence, with its feigned allegiance to the interests of the university, has produced that class of student which, adapting from the Jungle Book, I call the "Bandar-log."

Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little hill. ... The Bandar-logs called the place their city, and pretended to despise the jungle people because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles in the hall of the King's council-chamber and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in the corner and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the King's garden, where they would shake the rose-trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not, and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds, telling one another that they were doing as men did,

or shouting "there are none in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log." Then they would tire and seek the treetop, hoping the jungle people would notice them . . . and then they joined hands and danced about and sang their foolish songs. "They have no law," said Mowgli to himself, "no hunting call and no leaders." . . . And he could not help laughing when they cried, "We are great, we are free, we are wonderful . . . we all say so, and so it must be true you shall carry our words back to the jungle people that they may notice us in future."

The Bandar-log is with us. Busy to no purpose, imitative, aimless; boastful but unreliant; inquisitive but quickly losing his interest; fitful, inconsequential, platitudinous, forgetful; noisy, sudden, ineffectual.—The Bandar-log must go.

Because it is the spirit of the American university to prove the things that are new, to hold fast that which is good; to face abuses boldly and to reform them; because I am the son of an American university, and have grown in her teaching, and in my observation of many universities and many schools, to regard the evil as transitory and abuses as remediable, I have ventured in this essay to set down simply, and with a frankness that I trust may not be misconstrued, some of the vagaries of our educational system at the present time, and some of the reasons for their existence. For I am sure that in the recognition of the cause is to be found the means of cure.

THE MAN OF ARGOS

Another class also of students makes, though unconsciously, for the wane of general scholarship-the class of the prematurely vocational. It is not futile, like that

of the Bandar-log, but earnest, and with a definite end in view. Still, unwisely guided to immature choice and hasty study of a profession, it not only misses the liberal equipment necessary for the ultimate mastery of life, but indirectly diverts the general scope of education from its true ideals.

The spirit of the Renaissance, says a modern historian of poetry, is portrayed in a picture by Moretto. It is of a young Venetian noble. "The face is that of one in the full prime of life and of great physical strength; very handsome, heavy and yet tremulously sensitive, the large eyes gazing at some thing unseen, and seeming to dream of vastness. On his bonnet is a golden plaque with three words of Greek inscribed on it-iov Aiav по0-"Oh, but I am consumed with excess of desire."

If this be the motto of the Renaissance, what shall we say is the motto of to-day? Not ioù λíav no; no creed of vague insatiable yearning, but rather the závτa avτínα 700-the lust for immediate and universal possession: as who should cry,

"I want no little here below,
I want it all, and quick."

In one of his odes, Pindar, lauding the older times when the Muse had not yet learned to work for hire, breaks off "but now she biddeth us observe the saying of the Man of Argos, 'Money maketh man'"-xpημaτα, Xρýματ' άvýp. If not money, then sudden successthat is the criterion of the Man of Argos today.

The Bandar-log and the Argive retard the advance of scholarship in the university; and not the university alone is responsible for their presence, but the elementary school as well.

THE STAGGERS AND THE CARELESS LAPSE

Of the effectiveness of the public schools in the several states, the universities of each state respectively may judge. From Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to California and Stanford the judgment is a groan. Is the fault with the schools? or is the standard of requirement too high? or is the basis of conclusion in each case too narrow? The reply may best be given by one who examines pupils of all states.

"Probably nowhere else," writes Colonel Larned of the United States Military Academy, in the North American Review of September, 1908, "probably nowhere else can the general effectiveness of our public schools be so well gauged as at the academies at West Point and Annapolis. Their candidates are drawn from every congressional district of every state and territory of the Union, and largely from the class of our citizens who send their children to the primary and high schools supported by the states." The subjects of examination are elementary: algebra, geometry, grammar, composition and literature, geography, and history. "The examinations are written and abundant time is given for their completion, even by those of inferior capacity and preparation. The papers are marked on a scale of one hundred as a maximum, sixty-six being the normal minimum standard of proficiency." Generally speaking, deficiency in one subject constitutes deficiency in the whole examination. Out of 314 candidates who attempted the entrance papers in March, 1908, 265 failed: 56 in one subject, 209 in two or more subjects. Of the failures there were 44 per cent in algebra, 67 per cent in geometry, 37 per cent in grammar, 40 per cent in composition and literature. "Out of the 314 examined mentally it appears that 295, or 90 per