Wasting Our Young People
Headmaster, The Taft School Watertown, Connecticut
A short time ago there came to my office with his parents an attractive, cheerful, well-poised eighteen-year-old boy seeking admission to Taft. Friends had persuaded him that if he wanted to qualify for a good college he had better do something quickly about his scholastic record.
In his four years in high school his record was largely C’s and D’s, with a few failures. He had dropped Latin, his only foreign language, after one year. He had completed one year of algebra, and on his second try he had managed to secure a passing grade in geometry. His program in this, his senior year, consists of business mathematics, typing, mechanical drawing, zoology, health, and public speaking. It contains no English, history, foreign language, nor mathematics of a college preparatory type. Altogether, in his four years he will have completed six or seven courses which, with respectable grades, could be regarded as acceptable credits for college admission. A minimum of fifteen is required by most colleges.
Unfortunately, we could not possibly consider this boy for Taft, even though his transcript indicated that his scholastic aptitude was sufficiently strong to enable him to cope successfully with our program and to qualify for college admission. His academic training and background are such that in the twelfth or even the eleventh grade of a school of our type he would have an experience of failure and frustration.
We could only advise that he continue at high school with the hope that, equipped with a diploma, he might secure admission to some college somewhere or that he plan to spend two years at a tutoring school, of which there are still a few strong ones.
The tragedy of this boy’s situation was further intensified by the fact that since he was a star on the football team he had been confidently harboring the illusion that he would secure a scholarship in, as well as admission to, college.
The regrettable situation in which this boy finds himself is far from being atypical. It is our conviction on the basis of our experience at Taft that many of our young people have had a similar experience. This waste of the abilities and brain power of our country’s youth is frightening to contemplate.
The colleges of the country have generous scholarship programs. The National Merit Scholarship Program — financed by foundations and industry — the General Motors Scholarship Program, and others like it are devoting millions of dollars each year to the financing of higher education for the nation’s ablest youth. The federal government is planning to spend millions in an effort to search out and educate those who have superior ability in mathematics and science. These programs are worthy, admirable, and apparently imperative in view of our nation’s needs. However, in the meanwhile, thousands of our youth possessing sufficient natural ability to benefit from a sound college experience are not going to be able to qualify.
Where does the blame for all this lie? It is easy to say that the secondary schools are at fault for the condition. Indeed, the schools cannot escape a considerable measure of responsibility for this most unfortunate situation. The educationists, with their absorption in “life adjustment” courses at the expense of courses requiring mental discipline and plain hard work, have contributed to producing a generation many of whose members are nonintellectual, regarding education as an unfortunate experience to be passed through as painlessly as possible. But we cannot exonerate the students themselves. It is they who elect business arithmetic rather than algebra, the how-todo-it courses rather than physics. It is they who select the program that will make the minimum demand and afford the maximum amount of free time.
I fear that the world they live in urges such an approach on them. Directly and by implication they hear a great deal about the values of the “good” way of life — by which is meant the easy way. Through all sorts of media, they are told that the desirable thing is to live as well and effortlessly as possible. But when we have admitted that, we cannot escape the fact that a good part of their attitude is a reflection on the upbringing they have received from us parents. The truth is that throughout the nation we parents have been soft and indulgent with our children. In their upbringing we have failed to inculcate in them industry, conscientiousness, perseverance, the will to discipline themselves. We have been too much concerned with their present happiness and not enough with their future happiness and effectiveness in life.