The Headmasters' Conference

Abstract

AFTER a school career prolonged to the age of eighteen in one of the great public schools, a youth should possess certain minima of endowment—moral, physical and intellectual. His intellectual assets should include a reasonable proficiency in the use of the English language, the ability to read intelligently at least one other language, a notion of what the study of history really means (with some sense of historical perspective), and acquaintance with some fundamental scientific discoveries, together with an inkling of the importance of the advancement of man's control over his environment. He should have an intellectual interest in at least one subject, not necessarily, nor even preferably, included in his school studies. A charge has been preferred against the schools of failing to equip the majority of the young men who leave their ranks with even this modest minimum of mental endowment, and the authors of this charge include men whose experience and ability lend weight to their indictment. Interest in the headmasters' debates concerning curricula should not at this juncture be confined to the ranks of the scholastic profession.