Project Editor: Kimberly Kraska, UCARE, 2007

Project Editor: Kimberly Kraska, UCARE, 2007

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THE STUDENT, as it has taken occasion to state before, is not a believer in the usefulness of the preparatory department. It is of the opinion that the High School of Lincoln should bear the same relation to our University that the High School of Ann Arbor bears to Michigan University' viz: a preparatory department. If it did the interests of both could be served best. The High School would be built up. It would contain older, and consequently better, students than it does now. By the present antagonistic system the University enters the market as it were, and bids for the children, of the High School, searcely [sic] started in their teens, with minds not sufficiently developed to do the work that a college ought to require. Nor is this the worst feature of the present system. When a professor of the High School begins to require his pupils to do hard and thorough work, or, when they fail entirely in their examinations, they show their disapproval of his teaching by leaving his classes and entering the University. Worthy additions, no doubt! Such students bring neither strength nor respect to an institution, but they do weaken its powers and humble its dignity. Can it be that such should be the case? Does not not the University cripple itself by accepting such students? Its purpose is not to do the work of the common school. The time and energy that professors spend with the sub-freshman classes is lost to that work which properly belongs to them. By a very little trouble, and no extra expense, arrangements could be made so that the High School of Lincoln could fit students for the freshman class in any one of the three courses of the University. In other words the High School could, and ought to be made the preparatory department of the University. Why cannot it be done?