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rolled as members of teams that enter a contest flying college colors. Yet, "we must have football anyway" whether its objectionable features be eliminated or not.

The saloon is a catch basin for some of the drift that floats along with every football tide. I venture the assertion that few saloon-keepers can be found who are not pronounced in their approval of football. These worthies, who thrive by the undoing of their fellows, reap a money harvest upon the advent to their vicinity of people who patronize prize fights, dog fights, cock fights, and football. The demoralization of football is seen in the increasing drunkenness connected with it. A body of college students, free from thought of lesson and lecture, with no keen sense of propriety or duty, en route to or from the scene of a football contest, that does not contain a number of halfdrunken, loud-mouthed, shallow-pated rowdies, is the exception. Any one whose misfortune it has been to be a passenger in a car filled with students, and hangers-on, returning from a football match will have no difficulty in calling to mind scenes and incidents which more than prove my statement.

Perhaps some may think that the football "craze" is given undue notice in this paper. My words could not give it more prominence than it has assumed in the educational life of the country.

The representatives of seven collegiate institutions met in Chicago in Thanksgiving week. These institutions are named "western" though they belong to the north half of the Mississippi valley. The first subject that came up for consideration was the football question. There was a marked unanimity of opinion that the football phase of athletics was in need of prompt and wise modification and control. "Diseases desperate grown, by desper

ate appliance are removed." These representatives of some of the most noted colleges in the country evidently did not share in the belief of the noted sports that the rules governing football "are now practically perfect." They did not "in any event believe in football.” Their first decision was that preparatory students should be ruled out of the game; their next, that a student should have one year's attendance at college before being eligible to play on a college football team. A resolution calling for less brutality in football contests was passed without a dissenting vote.

All persons having the interest of higher education at heart will commend the action of these college representatives. Some may regret that action looking to the prohibition of match games between the football teams of different institutions was not taken. In college circles it is sometimes claimed that football advertises an educational institution. So it does, but not in a manner that promotes its upbuilding. Says the Cleveland World:

"Strange as it may seem to the faculties of colleges and universities, there are parents who will not send their sons to an institution which brags of its ability to do them up; send them to the hospital; and maim them for life in football games, cane rushes, and other head-breaking, leg-dislocating, backinjuring sports."

If football "has come to stay", as predicted, its brutal and dangerous features must be proscribed. Its demoralizing accompaniments gambling, and drunkenness

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must be sternly and unflinchingly repressed. Its practice must not be permitted to make such inroads on the student's time as to wreck his legitimate college work. The game, as played at college, must have no tendency to professionalism. There are enough sports now,

who live by their wits and the labor of others, without the establishing of recruiting offices, in our educational institutions, to swell their number. The wished-for victory in a match game is the chief stumbling-block in the way of wholesome college athletics. This desire limits the number of active players, calls upon the chosen few for the "incessant practice" that demoralizes their college work, and sends a wave of unwholesome excitement over the whole student body. An expert, a professional must be called in to give direction to the "constant drill" required. This person swells at once into great importance, and his appearance in chapel is the signal for an outburst of student enthusiasm that manifests itself in prolonged and unrestrained hoots and yells.

When the rules governing football shall eliminate its time-wasting, dangerous, and brutal features; when they shall provide a game in which other players and in much larger numbers

than a few broad-chested, stronglimbed athletes can engage; when they shall be framed in recognition of the fact that all athletic games in college are but means to an end, and that end always subordinate to the accomplishment of scholastic work, yet promotive of it, something will have been done to divest the game of its most objectionable features.

Some recognized demoralization of college effort and discipline would also be removed by faculty regulations prohibiting all match games that take students away from the institution at any time in the college year. These match games are what arouse an interest and excitement inimical to study, to literary work of the college societies, to the right use of the library, to serious thought and moral elevation, and to the soul's growth under religious teachings and influence. Where interest is

centered, there is the direction of effort. Lessons and other college duties must suffer neglect, when such absorbing and exciting interest is focused upon things without the orbit of legitimate college work. College spirit of the right kind is commendable; fool spirit is to be deplored, and ought to be suppressed.

An editorial in Silver and Gold, the student publication at the State University, Boulder, after expressing regret that representatives of Colorado College, at Colorado Springs, had been in advance of the University students in securing a debate with representatives of the University of Nebraska, continues as follows:

"Now that football season is over, a new apology will have to be devised for non-existence of the literary societies."

That apology will be found whenever some other call, such as bicycling, skating, sleigh-riding, dancing, or cardplaying meets with attention from those who have practiced themselves in neglect of duty in their quest of amusement and sport. Things harmless in themselves become hurtful and demoralizing when engaged in to excess at the wrong time.

Is all college sport to be monopolized and demoralized by a coterie of students whose presence in college suggests everything else than the performance of its scheduled work? Few opposed to football, as the game is practiced and thereby known, would deny to students opportunity for proper physical culture. There are many proper, innocent games which, played in the open air and with moderation as to time and effort, give the participants the glow of health and increased power for mental effort. The best gymnasium in Colorado is the out-of-door one which our health-giving climate makes accessible almost throughout the year. Our young people ought to be

ashamed to confess that they have no zest for health-giving exercise secured in the practice of out-of-door sports unsuggestive of danger to life and limb, the loosening of moral fiber, and the palsy, if not death, of all Christian character.

Town ball, a popular game in my boyhood days, was participated in by all the boys of the school. The ball, a home-made product, was of yarn wound by deft fingers about a small piece of rubber or, in lieu thereof, a marble. The leather covering, when the ball had one, was taken from the top of a cast-off boot. The bat was usually a pine paddle so fashioned as to present, when wielded by the batter, a broad surface to the ball. None of the players was encased in sheet iron or upholstered with cotton batting. All padding obtainable was used to make less effective the downward curves of the teacher's paddle. The rules of the game made it permissible for the catcher to use his hat if he were not expert enough to stop the ball with his hands. The batter could demand high or low ball and dictate the speed of its delivery. Simple as was the game, it was thoroughly enjoyed by all who participated in it. There was no demoralizing of study, no danger to health, no incitement to gambling, no provocation to idleness, no wrecking of morals in its practice. I have not forgotten some of the open-air recreation in which I indulged when a college student. Baseball was the popular sport. Match games, wholly within college circles, were not infrequent. I was pitcher in one of the college nines nearly three years and, within that time, never played a game outside of the college grounds or one that awakened any one's fighting or gambling enthusiasm. Our victories and defeats were accepted pretty much in the same spirit. There was whole

some relaxation from study unattended with bodily harm, loss of interest in any phase of our literary work, or any infraction of college discipline. Many of what we now call field day exercises were in vogue. It was thought some honor to be a swift runner or a good jumper, but no hideous chapel din welccmed the winner of a race or the victor on the jumping ground. Such athletic sports as found favor were indulged in with moderation and with scarcely a ripple of excitement on the current of student life.

It must be enforced upon the public mind that the college is not a sporting arena. Its mission is not to demoralize character but to build it up. Games and contests that interfere with legitimate college work, that bring close in their train forces strong to work harm to body, mind, and soul, must find no favor with college patrons, no apologists in college faculties. What kind of athletic sports may students indulge in? and to what extent, and under what limitations, shall such sports be practiced? these are the burning questions to be considered to-day by college authorities and the public.

It is not strange that the lawless spirit evoked by football should question any one's right or authority to put metes and bounds to its practice. After the "grand game", as one of the newspapers called it, between the highschool teams of East and West Denver

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the air", to use the expressive language of a newspaper reporter, and "indications of a mutiny" unless the "obnoxious order" was revoked. The students were quoted as being of "the opinion that they reside in a country whose inhabitants enjoy the luxury of personal liberty." It was reported that any attempt to suspend the refractory and rebellious students would make the school authorities defendants in suits at law. This statement presupposed that the pupils' parents would stand by them, to the utmost, in their rowdyish, senseless, and law defying course. In this there was an evident error, as football in the high-schools of Denver has fallen into "innocuous desuetude" and the Goddess of Justice has not had to bare her arm or lift her sword in defence of the right of school youth to have everything and everybody turn to the right when they cry gee.

Attorney-General Carr, of Colorado, quotes with words of approval, the language of a Texas court: "Teachers have the right, the same as boards, to prescribe reasonable rules for the government of the school under their charge and to enforce, by moderate re

straint and correction, obedience to such rules. This authority of the teacher over the pupil is not, in our opinion, necessarily limited to the time when the pupils are at the school room or under the actual control of the teacher. Such authority, we think, extends to the prescribing and enforcement of reasonable rules and regulations even while the pupils are at their homes."

The education of the future, no matter where or to whom given, must make prominent the meaning of such words as law, order, and decency. Liberty is not license. No one, so long as he forms one of a community, can govern his actions solely by his own will, often untaught and undisciplined. His liberty, for which he will contend the more persistently, perhaps, as he is the more ignorant, does not mean any right he has to do a given act irrespective of the statute and the just rights of others. Liberty protected and bounded by law, is the birth-right of every citizen of this country; and high or low, rich or poor, strong or weak, cannot, with right, claim any wider freedom than that.

THE CRITIC'S REVIEW OF THE HARVARD REPORT ON ENGLISH.

BY MARGARET W. SUTHERLAND.

The Critic of November 13th has in it an interesting and very just editorial upon "The Harvard Report on English." It shows the importance of the discussion which resulted in a provisional scheme of study, not only for composition and English, but for other subjects embraced in the work of preparation

for college. It does not altogether approve of the manner in which the committee attempted to get at the root of the difficulty and distribute the blame for its existence; and in a courteous but straightforward manner it objects to unfair criticism of the work of the teachers in the secondary schools.

To quote from the article: "It is always desirable, even in reforms, to be just; and particularly desirable to be just to a large body of men and women whose devotion to immediate and exacting duties is quite as useful as that of the college instructors in English, and whose practical assistance in the discussion has made possible, a reform that was only 'in the air', mild and chaotic, whose early movement into shape was much hindered by false. misdirection on the part of the college."

Agreeing with every word of this, I am struck with the thought that high school teachers after reading it once as it is, ought to read it, substituting the word "high" for "college," stopping with the word "instructors," and making the statement apply to all elementary work. We all so need to cultivate the virtue of justice toward the schools preparatory to our own.

The Critic in describing some of the early attempts to build up a system for the study of English says: "But it was not a wise leadership that set the untrained youth to noting the errors in the English of Walter Scott and Thackeray, that spent its days and nights in ringing the changes on 'shall' and 'will', when it had taken away from the pedagogue the 'shall' and from the pulpit the 'will'."

After describing some other features of the new method now at the service of secondary schools the writer says: "A careful tasting of

the literature which has become classic is both new and old. The daily use of the pen and pencil in the classroom may be said to be modern, and while injurious to the handwriting when the letter is not yet fully settled, is so useful an adjunct to the instruction in spelling and in composition, that it should be accepted."

With the deepest kind of interest in high schools, having spent fourteen happy years in teaching in them, I wish the teachers of the primary and grammar schools in our towns and cities, and the teachers in our district schools to adapt much that I have quoted and shall quote to their own work, for I am of the opinion that to have the use of good English at all general, we must begin back of the secondary schools. For years we have had a considerable amount of written work in the city schools, but has it been of the right character? Have we had a sufficient amount of writing in the country schools? The Report of the Harvard Committee says: "More practice, more daily drill and severe discipline are required. The difficulty is to find time for this practice, drill, and discipline. *The solution seems to be simple: English should be taught in the preparatory schools not, as now, altogether objectively, but incidentally, and in connection with other studies-mathematics, geography, history, and, especially, foreign languages and the classics." In most of our elementary schools.

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