Education: New Schoolmarm

Of the daughters of Dwight Whitney Morrow, Constance, 16, is the comeliest; Anne, 24, the most famed; Elisabeth, 27, the liveliest. Elisabeth surpasses her sisters in achieving public notice in her own right. Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was reported engaged to her before he settled on Anne. After that engagement was announced it was Elisabeth who usually met and talked to newshawks. During her sister’s confinement last spring word went out that the doctors were really calling because of Elisabeth’s illness. And for the past six years her interest in child education has been aperiodically broadcast. Somedav, it was said, she wished to have a school. Last week Miss Morrow opened a school for 40 small children in her home town, Englewood, N. J. Graduated from Smith College in 1925, she studied at the Sorbonne, later at the University of Grenoble. Returned to En glewood, she taught for a while at Dwight School for girls, of which she is an alumna, her father a trustee.— Then she went to Mexico City. Last year she was per mitted to teach, without pay, a daily half-hour class in English to small Mexicans in two of the government schools. Two in fantile paintings, the gift of her pupils, last week hung on the walls of “The Old Vanderbeek Homestead” where Schoolmarm Morrow opened her institution. Friends of Miss Morrow believe that she is quite serious about taking up teach ing as a permanent profession. She has leased the Vanderbeek place — a nine-room, frame house in the gingerbread tra dition — for three years. The interior has been decorated in the pleasing manner of “progressive” schools, with beads, blocks and knick-knacks to keep the inmates, whose ages range from 18 months to 5? years, amused for the hour and a half a day they are indoors. Schoolmarm Morrow and her faculty of five are products of the Child Education Foundation, an organization which promulgates a modified Montessori method. Tuition at the Morrow school was described as “reason-able.”

Miss Morrow confessed that she had a few ideas of her own about preeducation which she would put into effect, but refused to divulge them. “Time enough for that,” said she, “when I prove to myself whether or not they work.”

At Rochester

When an upheaval among New York State Baptists in 1850 caused several professors and a number of students of Madison University (Hamilton) to migrate to Rochester and begin classes in the United States Hotel, Ralph Waldo Emerson fancifully related that a Rochester landlord— believing that his hostelry would bring in more revenue as a university—had put in a few books, sent for a coach-load of professors, graduated a class “by the time green peas were ripe.” Since the pea crop of 1850 the University of Rochester has thrived and prospered. Second President was David Jayne Hill (1888-96), who left the Presidency of Bucknell to go to Rochester, left Rochester eventually to become U. S. Ambassador to Germany. Third President is Rush Rhees, during whose administration the college has grown from a small institution of 200 to an eminent university (enrollment: 1,542). Last week occurred the official opening of a new $10,000,000 plant, the College for Men, most impressive of all worldly goods which have come to Rochester in President Rhees’s 30-year regime.

On the site of a onetime golf club, close to a broad bend of the Genesee River, visitors were shown 18 handsome Colonial classrooms and dormitories. Primly presiding over the group is the colonnade of Rush Rhees Library Tower, tallest bookstack in the world (19 tiers high). No Rochester undergraduate need ever get his feet wet going to classes, for all buildings are connected by tunnels. Surrounding this educational opulence are 87 acres of lawn and woodland. Henceforth the old campus of the University will be used by women students (Rochester is coordinated, not co-educational).

Chief donor to the new unit was George Eastman, trustee of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, most generous Rochester benefactor, who gave $2,500,000. The General Education Board gave $1,750,-ooo; alumni gave $1.500,000. The remainder was raised among the Rochester citizenry in 1924.

Presidents Sound Off

College presidents last week had the duty and pleasure of addressing their undergraduates reassembled for another academic year.

President Alexander Grant Ruthven of the University of Michigan defended academic paternalism.

President Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago said: “The chief aim of this assembly is to make the president of your university for once in a year get up at eight o’clock in the morning.”

President Robert Ernest Vinson of Western Reserve said: “I look forward to the experience of opening school each year. It keeps me from getting cynical.”

President Ada Louise Comstock of Radcliffe College compared college open-ing to starting a voyage.

Rev. Aloysius G. Hogan, S.J., new President of Fordham (New York), stressed the need of religion in education.

President James Rowland Angell of Yale was ill, but Chaplain Elmore M. McKee made “A Plea for Inwardness.”

President John Grier Hibben of Princeton spoke on “The Duties of Citizenship.”

President Harvey Nathaniel Davis of Stevens Institute discoursed on industrial idealism.

President Livingston Farrand of Cornell spoke on the responsibilities of the college graduate.

Lowell & Vandal

Academic officials all over the land last week took occasion to make public utterance (see p. 67), but in no instance was the occasion so newsworthy as the announcement that President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard would permit newshawks to come and query him. Al-though he would not allow himself to be quoted, it was the first interview he had permitted in 21 years. Cause of the occurrence: the 295th opening of Harvard and the inauguration of the Harkness House Plan, two units of which—Dunster and Lowell Houses—were completed, filled, ready to function.

When it was made known in November 1928 that Edward Stephen Harkness had given Harvard $12,000,000 to construct seven autonomous “inner-colleges” to house the three upper classes, long and bitter were the wails of many a conservative graduate and undergraduate. The antagonists claimed that Harvard was sacrificing its dearest traditions. Because of the shyness which the college has traditionally shown the Press, it was not until last week that President Lowell’s views on the purpose of the House Plan became public.

From his discourse with the newspapermen, it became evident that President Lowell had harbored the inner-college idea for years, that just prior to the Harkness gift Harvard was scraping enough money together t6 start one such institution as an experiment. Further information, heretofore unrevealed, was that President Lowell considered the social value of the new system as important as its educa tional advantage. With the new House Plan must come the dissolution of the very definite groups of like-minded young men who have traditionally inhabited Harvard’s “Gold Coast” (Mt. Auburn Street). The House Plan, according to its prime mover, was calculated to elimi nate cabals brought together by “wealth and origin.” Although such thoughts in the back of President Lowell’s head were news to the outside world, they were not news to Harvard. On the eve of the opening of Dunster and Lowell came two occurrences which indicated undergraduate feeling — one normal, one violent. In spite of the fact that it is contrary to the spirit of the new system, Juniors Barry W700d and Charles Cunningham, roommates, footballers, hockeyists, de manded that they be allowed to move into Lowell House with 25 of their cronies, a two-year-old clique mostly recruited from Milton Academy. This the authori ties reluctantly permitted. And in the dead of night an unknown — either as a prank, or because he was dis gruntled at exclusion, or from resentment at the whole idea — stole into the refectory of Lowell House, crept up to a portrait of Herbert Weir Smyth, Eliot Professor Emeritus of Greek Literature, and slashed out its face. Housemaster Julian Lowell Coolidge discovered the mutilation, had the college sleuthed for the vandal. He was not found. The Crimson (under graduate daily) described the affair as “an act of simple insanity.”

— There is no connection between Dwight Morrow and Dwight School other than his trusteeship.