A Century of Progress

How deeply should U.S. high school students plumb the awful mysteries of language and mathematics? Last week two education magazines by happenstance compared the standards of a century ago and now.

In the Amherst Alumni News, President Calvin H. Plimpton quoted Amherst's application requirements for 1860: "Candidates for admission to the Freshman Class are examined in the grammar of the Latin and Greek languages, Virgil, Cicero's Select Orations, and Sallust or Caesar's Commentaries, Arnold's Latin Prose Composition, eight chapters; Xenophon's Anabasis and two books of Homer's Iliad; English Grammar, Arithmetic, Algebra to Quadratic Equations, and two books of Loomis' Geometry or of Playfair's Euclid."

By contrast, The Clearing House, a magazine for high school teachers, offers a clue to what "modern" teachers expect of U.S. high school students. Its "Tricks of the Trade" column recommends the use of mail-order catalogues in the classroom. Reason: they are "wonderful teaching aids. Skills which can be quite painlessly developed include: use of an index, addition and subtraction, certainly multiplication, use of a postage rate table, writing checks and money orders, spelling and penmanship." Besides, looking things up in a catalogue is "fun."

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