A list of "Dont's" for the parents of boys and girls who will soon graduate from high school has been prepared by Dean Loomis of New York University. It is so beautifully balanced that it would hang evenly all around if it were poised on the point of a needle. But its chief virtue is its emphasis on common sense. Fathers and mothers probably need to be reminded that they should not insist on a college education for their children merely because they themselves had one or did not have one. It is easy to be wise about these problems until the moment when they become urgent.

All the parental wisdom in the world is sometimes not enough to send students to the best college for their needs. Dean Loomis recognizes the forces which often take the decision from the parents, and warns against them, but there is no way of surely carrying out his instructions.

Boys and girls know well enough what college they want to attend, and whether they want to go to any. Some wish to go with their friends. Others prefer a college within easy reach of home, and some welcome the opportunity to get as far away as possible. They are too shrewd to offer reasons which might prejudice father or mother, but in almost any catalogue they can find plenty of plausible evidence of the good they could derive from that particular college.

Choosing a college because of social contacts already made or others hoped for, or because it is known to encourage athletic interests, is a motive strongly opposed by Dean Loomis. An amplification of the unintellectual selection of a college appears in this month's Atlantic. This discussion of the kind of students who should not go to college at all is by Mr. Frederick Winsor, for many years headmaster of a New England boys' school.

He has great admiration for the boy whom he describes as "unintellectual." That boy is not unintelligent, but his mind does not work like that of the boy for whom higher education is a suitable preparation for life. Colleges are beginning to realize that boys of the latter stamp are not nearly so numerous as enrolment might indicate. But they are still providing training, not of the mind, but training in skills, for the benefit of those who insist on going to college whether their talents are developed by it or not.

Many boys, non-academic-minded but nevertheless possessed of plenty of practical intelligence, are dropped from preparatory schools and by tutoring and cramming, "shoe-horned" into college. Mr. Winsor has outlined the kind of secondary education which he believes these boys should receive. It would prepare them not for college but for life: yet probably many such students would find themselves qualifying, in spite of its main purpose, for easy entrance into college. New York Times.