Education: Knox Elects

Last winter the students of Knox College (Galesburg, Ill.) placarded their campus: “We want Meiklejohn.” They meant Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, revolutionary deposed President of Amherst College. They wanted Dr. Meiklejohn for President of Knox to succeed Dr. James L. McConaughy who last January shifted to the chair of Wesleyan University (TIME, Dec. 29). They thought Dr. Meiklejohn and his liberalism were “indispensable.” But Dr. Meiklejohn was planning an “independent” university of his own (TIME, Sept. 15) and the students’ placards faded, wilted.

Not until last week did the Knox trustees find a man to fill the shoes of Dr. McConaughy. When they did he turned out to bo Albert Britt of Manhattan, for 14 years editor of Outing, for the past year and a half an editorial standby of Publisher Frank A. Munsey. Thus it came to pass that there was another editor-president.* President-elect Britt’s qualifications were enumerated: his age, 52; his Illinoisian background—born in Utah, Ill., schooled in Galesburg and at Knox itself; his wide experience and acquaintance in business and literary circles; his “unusual sense of humor”; his information on and enthusiasm for College athletics; his conception of these last as all-round developers in preference to the development chiefly of crack teams and individuals; his religious nature.

Manifesto

From its national headquarters at Chicago, the American Federation of Teachers (adjunct of the American Federation of Labor) issued a 16-pronged manifesto of its program for next year. The teachers will agitate for:

1) The five-hour school day. (Many schedules, particularly in high schools, occupy from 6 to 8 hours.)

2) A “cultural” wage, allowing them to “improve their training and social attainments,” with annual automatic increments.

3) A single salary scale for teachers equally experienced. Minimum salary: $2,000 per annum.

4) Sabbatical leave, with “adequate compensation.”

5) Academic freedom, i. e. from strictures upon teaching established facts and well-supported theories, especially in social and natural sciences.

6) Pay during illness, quarantine or funeral-attendance.

7) Abolition of secret teacher-rating systems in boards of supervision, etc.

8) Appropriate pensions after 30 years’ service.

9) Maximum enrolments of 1,500 pupils; maximum classes of 30.

10) Erection of schoolhouses that are “comfortable, safe, sanitary, well-equipped, and yet retain an air of friendliness.”

11) Recognition of the voice of teachers’ councils in determiningeducational policies.

12) Teacher tenure, i. e., discouragement of the “hire-and-fire” policy.

13) Trial and appeal boards composed equally of teachers and education board members, plus a jointly elected neutral.

14) Modern methods from experimental fields.

15) Elective (instead of appointive) boards of education, financially independent, acting as separate taxing bodies, having teacher and labor (small taxpayers) representation.

16) Equal educational opportunities to all races, creeds and social strata.

In Virginia

Experiencing various emotions, the friends and enemies of Evolution last week beheld the formation, in Richmond, Va., of a Patriotic Welfare Committee which vowed to do battle this fall for a bill in the Virginia legislature similar to that lately passed in Tennessee and that lately defeated in Georgia—a bill to forbid the teaching, in state-supported schools, of any theory of the origin of man “in conflict with the Bible.”

The embattled patriots: Ku Klux Klan, Women of the Ku Klux Klan, Junior Order of the United American Mechanics, Sons and Daughters of Liberty, Patriotic Order of the Sons of America, Patriotic Order of Americans, Daughters of America, Order of Fraternal Americans. The same patriots lately backed, but lost, a bill causing verses from the Bible to be read daily before school classes.

In Fundamentalland

In Tennessee, where John Thomas Scopes recently filled the heavens by teaching Evolution (TIME, May 18 et seq.), came the news that Dayton’s High School is to have one Raleigh E. Valentine Reece, reporter on The Nashville Tennessseean, as a teacher in the place of the aforesaid John Thomas Scopes, ousted.

Mr. Reece does not believe in Evolution, a fact which comforted all pioneer Tennesseeans. But he does believe that, if the theory could be proved beyond the shadow of a scientific doubt, it would not conflict with the tale of Genesis. This was likewise approved by the Tennesseeans.

In Kentucky, contiguous to Tennessee, Miss Lela V. Scopes, like her brother an Evolutionist, was refused reappointment to her position in the Paducah schools. Smiling, she announced that she had signed a contract to teach in the Highland Manor School for Girls at Tarrytown, N. Y.

“Psychic Bath”

Picture a schoolroom full of seated children, all tense, eyes forward, on the alert. Teacher sits tensely too, watching them breathlessly. Suddenly Teacher cries a sharp command. The children spring to their feet, jump up and down, leap on their chairs and desktops, run, scream, yell, pull hair, bleat, catcall, caterwaul, whistle, shout, gibber, bang fists, stamp feet, kick out, fall down, scramble around. Seeing the pandemonium slacken, Teacher joins the spectacle, waves arms, shouts, yells, halloos, squeaks, bellows.

Then Teacher sits down. Another sharp command. Into their places shoot the children, sit erect, silent, stock still— still and silent as heaving, panting children can sit. The panting and the heaving cease. Silence settles down over the room like a soft rain. Nerves relax. Ebulliency is gone. Repose remains. Then back to lessons again.

Such scenes do not yet occur, by design, in U. S. schools. But it is the proceeding that a Paris despatch described last week as Pedagog Phillippe Teste’s “psychic bath,” adopted by several French schools to develop children’s self-control. Teachers testified that the “bath” had proved “extremely beneficial” in tranquilizing unruly, restive children. Doubtless it had stimulated many a logy, lethargic one as well.

At Michigan

Michigan University last week announced its choice of a successor to Poet Robert Bridges, English Laureate, as incumbent of the Michigan Fellowship in Creative Arts, a chair instituted in 1921 by the late President Marion LeRoy Burton and first filled by Poet Robert Frost. The chosen was Author Jesse Lynch Williams of Manhattan, onetime (1921) President of the Authors’ League, Pulitzer Prize winner (1917, for his play, Why Marry?), novelist and short-story writer of the same kindly school as his fellow Princetonian, Booth Tarkington, and his good friend Julian Street. Mr. Williams, a calm, beetle-browed gentleman who this week turned 54, has not the air of a professional litterateur. Rather does he seem an urbane, drily humorous gentleman of comfortable means and considerable social distinction. During his year’s residence at Ann Arbor, he will be afforded ample leisure for his literary pursuits and a free hand to bring to the students, in any way he chooses, his views upon the life of art and the art of living.

Liberal Dartmouth

A year ago, President Hopkins of Dartmouth College received, by request, a report on “the liberal college,” why it should exist, how it ought to work— from a dozen members of his Senior class. The students had gathered their information, resolved their theories, on visits to numerous U. S. institutions of higher learning (TIME, Aug. 4, 1924). Then, in May, President Hopkins received and had published A Study of the Liberal College by Prof. Richardson of the Dartmouth Chemistry Department, whom he had commissioned to visit colleges abroad, especially in England (TIME, May 4).

This month, Prof. Arthur Corning White of the Dartmouth English Department tells in Current History Magazine into what concrete terms President Hopkins and the Dartmouth Faculty translated the two reports, terms which will be effective when Dartmouth reopens her doors next month.

Prof. White calls the translation “Dartmouth’s Reform in College Education … the most fundamental changes in American academic policy since Dr. Eliot’s introduction of the elective system at Harvard.” Fundamental changes they are indeed, though not new departures, since they embody ideas already mustered into the policies of some other U. S. colleges, notably Princeton. But they are changes of great interest to educators, especially in their collective appearance at a single college.

Briefly, the changes are four:

1) Fundamental courses for Freshman and Sophomores to familiarize them with the various departments of knowledge and give a basis of general information on which to build up a specialty later. “No student will be allowed to graduate who cannot write clear, logical correct English.”

Other requirements: a semester each of Citizenship and Evolution; a year of Physical Education; a year each of two of the following: Mathematics, an ancient language, a modern language; a year each of two courses in Mathematics or Physical Science; a year each of two courses in History, Philosophy, Psychology or the social sciences.

2) Specializing or “majoring” for Juniors and Seniors in a chosen subject, with kindred courses synthesized.

3) A comprehensive examination at the end of Senior year, designed to gauge not only the student’s mastery of facts but also his facility in methods of work and his perspective on the subject as a whole and its place in the body of knowledge.

4) Exemption of the exceptionally able student from all regular class attendance, affording him such instruction as best fits his individual needs and freedom to pursue his work at whatever speed and to whatever distance his capacity permits—that is, honors courses.

“At last,” concludes Prof. White, “we in America are recognizing the exceptional student. Heretofore we have done all we could to throttle him.”

*Editor Glenn Frank of Century is also President-elect Frank of the University of Wisconsin (TiME, May 25).