A Teacher Speaks

When mighty Harvard accepts a boy, he considers himself among the ablest high school seniors in the land. This popular idea cuts little ice with Schoolmaster Philip Marson, who prepared generations of Harvard men at famed Boston Latin School, the nation's oldest public school, which last week celebrated its 325th birthday. Marson's contention: Harvard's entrance requirements are at a record low. And the effect on Boston Latin--and all U.S. secondary schools--is disastrous.

Three years ago Marson quit Boston Latin after teaching English there for 31 years (TIME, March 10, 1958). He left with a blast: "The American school system, from first grade through college, has become a huge kindergarten." Marson spells out his charge in a new book, A Teacher Speaks (David McKay; $3.95). No sensationalist ("I feel as though I am doing a mental and spiritual strip-tease before a mob on Boston Common"), Marson hopes "to reveal some of the causes as well as the potential cures for a very sick educational system."

No Wailing. "In 1926 the school was a teacher's paradise," recalls Marson. A boy knew precisely what he was up against, from six years of English and Latin to weekly essays and monthly reports. The school banned curve-grading (the clod-coddling system based on the class average), marked only individual achievement. If it was often Dickensian, "nobody whimpered, wailed or gnashed his teeth" at the heavy load.

What kept standards high? Answers Marson: the detailed high-school curriculum prescribed by the powerful College Entrance Examination Board of the time, and the fact that Harvard accepted boys only for academic excellence. But around 1935, Harvard added nonacademic admission criteria: photographs, social poise, athletic prowess. "The real crusher" came in the 1940s when Harvard and other College Board members abolished the old essay examinations (in all subjects) and "substituted the present objective and objectionable tests of today."

Teacher Marson scoffs at the idea that objective tests are necessary for a flood of college applicants from widely varying high schools. He believes that percentile grades are "relative hogwash," and that essay exams are irreplaceable. "The fact that not one complete sentence (or paragraph) has to be composed either in the Verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test or in the Achievement Test in English composition has destroyed the function of the old entrance examination that served as a national unifying force in the teaching of reading and writing."

Even at Harvard, which requires three achievement tests (most colleges ask none), the applicant can skip English if he is weak in it. "Where does [this] leave the teacher of senior English? Completely out of the running." And so Marson quit to avoid being little more than "a class room baby sitter."

Small Beginning. If admissions men boil at Marson's bare-knuckled attack, few may disagree that essay exams are needed. For just this reason the College Board recently announced a short one (TIME, Nov. 9). To Marson, this is only a small beginning. He calls on colleges to jolt high schools by immediately restoring "honest grading and absolute standards of academic excellence."

At 68, Self-Exile Marson is "sorely tempted" to teach again. This summer, as he has for 24 years, he will run his boys' camp in New Hampshire. If a teaching chance comes after that, Marson will have ample references. As Conductor Leonard Bernstein (Boston Latin '35) puts it in a glowing foreword to Marson's book: "He taught me something unique, incomparable, invaluable in education, far beyond the teaching of tetrameter or dangling participles or even the glories of English verse: he taught me how to learn. And for this I shall bless him always."

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