Education: Richard Kane

The Century for October contributed much food for the thought of parents and pedagogs on higher education in the U. S. It published speculations by one Irwin Edman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, upon the mentality, moods and the painful dilemma of “Richard Kane,” undergraduate of today, brother of “Ferguson—Rex,” whose portrait appeared last month in the Atlantic Monthly (TIME, Sept. 22).

“Richard Kane” has often walked into Teacher Edman’s office between April and June seeking surcease from the throes of graduation, wondering what he is to do with his awakened, sensitive self in a cold, hard world. Says Teacher Edman: “The problem of giving Richard advice would have been simplified if he were a genius. He isn’t. He is simply one of a constant group who come to college and become genuinely attached to what its defamers call the higher life. He is, if you will, living beyond his intellectual income. He is a dilettante, an amateur, what he once ruefully called himself— a “Nearly.” He knows good prose when he sees it; memorable bits of it haunt him. … But he has neither the flair nor the facility of a writer. He loves poetry without being in the least a poet. He ‘gets’ philosophy without being technically expert or agile or spiritually profound. He admires scholarship truly and yet has not the patience nor the exactness of the scholar.”

For having got “Richard Kane” into this predicament, by half-fledging the wings of his spirit and not developing his practical mental legs, educators almost qualify, says Mr. Edman, for the title the Athenians gave Socrates— “corrupter of youth.” Not that Edman stands advocate for courses in horseshoeing, manicuring, potato culture or space-selling; but he sees a possibility for “following the example of certain recent journalistic enterprises”—combining both the cultural traditions and the practical discipline of education— and “retaining the best features of each.”

“There is a growing belief in some academic quarters that the day of the old four-year college course is over. Following the high school, it is prophesied there will be two years of junior college, similar to the preprofessional work in our larger universities. After those two years, in character like the closing years of the French lycée or the German gymnasium, a student will naturally move into some line of special professional or scholarly training in the university.”