By the progressive educational leaders of the country, the movement now seen on every hand that leads to the special handling of individual cases and to giving special individuals special privileges so as to let them get more out of their studies, is taken to be perhaps the chief educational tendency of the times. It will destroy the "lock step" into which the traditional curriculum has fallen.

At Yale, high stand men are gradually being given these privileges in the form of release from routine classroom work where the individual can profit from it. Harvard has just announced its policy of cutting down the amount of classroom teaching from the Christmas recess to the Mid-year examinations and of omitting it entirely in many courses for nearly the last month before the final exams. This advanced step at Harvard will be tried out at first only by those departments and divisions whose instructors are favorable to the idea. And it will not be applied to the Freshman Class. During these interims from daily attendance upon the old-time lectures and recitations, the Harvard plan is to substitute outside reading, apparently of a character that will make the old daily work seem an Elysium of ease by comparison. So the plan is not a 'let down" of work, but quite the contrary. As stated in the Harvard announcement of this change, it has been made because it was believed that Harvard teachers had too much to do and that the students would do better by independent study than by the old methods.

Whatever success may attend this proposal, and its purpose certainly is in line with what Yale is trying to do in its way, it is obvious that we are here observing a general tendency to get away from "teaching" in the mass and towards specialized development of the individual. It is along this path, we think, that there will come the solution of the college educational problem that of late years has become so urgent a question. The graduate who looks back on his college days and who feels that the mass education of his day did not land him personally anywhere and who regrets that he did not have the chance to develop this or that interest because of the rigidity of the curriculum of his day, will look on this new tendency as an inspired proceeding. At least his sons will have the opportunity which he missed. They will be given the chance to concentrate, in their upper-class years, on their chosen subjects, and thus to carry away with them from college something more than a smattering of many things. We know of no more important or progressive movement in college circles today. It will cost the universities a bright new penny or two to put these new ideas into operation. But if the results justify the expense of larger teaching staffs so as to do this individual teaching, and higher salaries so as to get the best men to do it, no one will complain about that. The cost will be little compared to the advantages that will be gained. --Yale Alumni Weekly.