College Prep Once Studied the Students

CREEP ALERT!

Here’s what was considered progressive practice in college prep schooling by Time Magazine, 1929:

Monday, Feb. 11, 1929

In The Hill School at Pottstown, Pa., are 425 boys. Presumably each wants to go to college. And the parents of each have, presumably, planned a college career for their offspring. For The Hill, great Eastern preparatory school, sends annual quotas of competently trained students to Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Williams. . . .

But what if the young new Headmaster of The Hill, James I. Wendell (TIME, Sept. 24) should say to a parent: “Our records seem to indicate that your son should not go to college. We can probably train him to pass his college board examinations. But we know from experience that the chances of his entering and staying in college are slim. We will liberalize his courses at The Hill. But we advise against his going to college.”

This, in substance, is what Headmaster Wendell has already said to the parents of twelve boys. And the parents, far from wrathful, agreed with the Headmaster, even praised him.

. . . at The Hill new questions are asked, a new sort of chart is being kept. Searching and revealing, it justifies Headmaster Wendell’s advice to the parents of the twelve who will not go to college.

. . .Each boy’s chart becomes a minute cumulative biography, recording calendar years instead of only school years. Tiny tragedies, failures, successes are noted by terse, keen recording angels with a flair for cross-reference. Tendencies lurking secretly behind chance acts are revealed. The Hill is thus gently turning to scrupulous study of the individual boy. It can advise and knows how best to phrase its advice. It knows too when certain students for one or another reason will find only unhappiness or failure in the looming college years.

Professor Ben D. Wood of the Educational Research Department at Columbia is the originator of the “Cumulative Education Record Forms.” He, friend of English Master John A. Lester of The Hill, spoke to him about his forms, how they could help the school, how the college might be aided by them in its annual selection of potential freshmen. Dr. Lester and Headmaster Wendell benefited much from Dr. Wood’s “cumulative forms” in devising the Hill method of recording progress and achievement. . .

Argues The Hill: If a boy’s record, ability and achievement indicate that he is better fitted for some activity other than college life, it is our duty to guide him away from college, and into the environment where he will be happiest and most useful.

To The Hill has gone credit from all keen educators for adopting Professor Wood’s new forms, for being the first U. S. preparatory school to apply the hard yet merciful rule of college-education for the fittest.

Help the high school, aid the college, and educate only the best-fitting boys? To be most morally accomplished with creepy techniques like this? – “Tendencies lurking secretly behind chance acts are revealed.” Educate them as what, international spies and extortionists? Self-fulfilling prophecy enforcement experts?

This was coincidentally the year my father was born, interesting to think what a life he led from this horrible academic world to his own professorial tenure at a large public university where such attitudes had been “mercifully” blotted out, or if not, at least thoroughly suppressed.

But the price for liberty is eternal vigilance.
“The Twenties are endlessly fascinating. It was the first truly modern decade and, for better or worse, it created the model for society that all the world follows today.“
So I’d keep close watch on those cum folders, the associated data banks, the zero tolerance conduct and speech codes, mental health screening for preschoolers, and all that jazz . . . because the next Jazz Age could be right around the corner.

“Here was a new generation . . . dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. . . .” –from F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, 1920