will follow when you apply the theories and opinions you find in these sources to local conditions.  Moreover, such questions will give you practice in getting material in the raw, as it were, by making up tables of statistics from catalogues, by getting facts by personal interview, and in other ways, which will be considered in Chapter II.  Finally, such subjects are much more likely to be of a size that you can bring to a head in the space and the time allowed to the average student, and they may have some immediate and practical effect in determining a question in which your own school or college has an interest.  Arguments on such subjects are therefore less likely to be “academic” discussions, in the sense of having no bearing on any real conditions.  When every college and school has plenty of such subjects continually under debate, there seems to be no reason for going farther and faring worse.

The main thing is to get a subject which will carry you back to facts, and one in which you will be able to test your own reasoning.

6.  Suggestions of Subjects for Practice.  Many of the subjects in the list below will need some adaptation to fit them to local conditions; and these will undoubtedly suggest many others of a similar nature.  Other subjects of immediate and local interest may be drawn from the current newspapers; and the larger, perennial ones like prohibition, woman suffrage, immigration laws, are always at the disposal of those who have the time and the courage for the amount of reading they involve.  The distinction between a subject and the proposition to be argued will be made in Chapter II.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUBJECTS OF ARGUMENTS

TO BE ADAPTED TO LOCAL AND PRESENT CONDITIONS

1.  Admission to this college should be by examination only.

2.  The entrance requirements of this college set a good standard for a public high-school course.

3.  Admission to this college should be by certificate from the candidate’s school, such as is now accepted at——­College.

4.  The standards for admission to this college or to the State University should be raised.

5.  The standard for graduating from this college should be raised.

6.  Attendance at chapel exercises should be made voluntary.

7.  The numbers of students in this college should be limited by raising the standard for admission.

8.  A reading knowledge of French or of German, to be tested by an oral examination, should be substituted for the present requirements for entrance in those languages.

9.  No list of books should be prescribed for the entrance examination in English.

10.  Freshmen should be required to be within bounds by eleven o’clock at night.

11.  Freshmen should not be elected to college societies.

12.  Students who have attained distinction in their studies should be treated as graduate students are, in respect to attendance and leave of absence.