Education: Whistling Morons

Professor Charles Gray Shaw of New York University last week wrinkled the world’s face with doubt of its intelligence and charged newspapers with big telegraph bills. Professor Shaw stated:

“In this age of noise there are still those who pursue the ancient art of whistling. Their fife-like tones can’t be heard, but they pucker up their lips just the same. They are not trying to create music but to release emotion. They are voicing their low mentality and confessing their sense of defeat.

“We often hear, or used to hear, the expression, ‘He whistled to keep his courage up.’ That’s just it, except that there’s more to the crude act of whistling than artificial affirmation of bravery.

“The economic stress of the day, even when we are not as now in the embrace of the bears, is too great for many people. They feel temporary defeat or a total loss. . . . Why do they whistle as so many of them do? They show inferiority and reveal defeat, but they proceed to advertise this by their impromptu music, which invariably is off the key.

“Whistling is an unmistakable sign of the moron. We might call it a part of his ‘defense mechanism.’ After he has set up his psychological barricade of sullenness, he sounds a note of war in his foolish whistling. He resolves not to care. He’s right and the world wrong.

“No great or successful man ever whistles. Can you think of Einstein or Edison or Mussolini tuning up to ‘Just One More Chance’? Can you think of President Hoover as whistling? Some of his critics may think that the time has come . . . but the strength of the Hoover mind and will is such that there will be no whistling in the White House.

“No, it’s only the inferior and maladjusted individual who ever seeks emotional relief in such a bird-like act as that of whistling.”

The worldwide stir that these remarks created was a three-day wonder. Upon looking up Professor Shaw, the impressionable Press found that he was a Professor of Philosophy and 60 years old. Not only that, he was a ninth lineal descendant of John & Priscilla Alden, author of a learned book, The Road to Culture * and repeatedly voted by students the most popular man of the N. Y. U. faculty. The only strange thing found in his history was his walking 15 years ago from Philadelphia to Manhattan, 90 mi. in 23 hr. 40 min. Editors telephoned, telegraphed, cabled and radioed last week for information on Professor Shaw’s eminent non-whistlers. Pouting Premier Mussolini, despatches reported, whistles. Whimsical Professor Einstein whistles. Presidents Hoover and Coolidge have never been observed whistling, but President Roosevelt did. Other famed & able whistlers found last week:

The late Senator Morrow, Colonel Lindbergh, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Henry Ford, Thomas A. Edison (who was dying last week), Senator Borah.

Senator Borah, quizzed at Chicago, growled: “Any man who says all whistlers are morons must be a moron himself. When I feel like whistling, I whistle. But I rarely feel like whistling.”

In Manhattan, New York University students shrilled cadenzas outside Professor Shaw’s office door. Letters denouncing his statement piled on his desk. Professor Shaw stifled a fit of chuckles and issued another statement: “Whistling from the throat is indicative of the intelligent person, while whistling with the lips is significant of the moron.”

More interviews, more press comments, more denunciations.

By this time Professor Shaw could no longer choke down his laughter. Slapping his middle he burst out: “What a comic world!” Then related just how it all had happened:

Last year he had sharing his office two raucous instructors. They whistled incessantly, “and always the same tunes, and always off the key. Remember that — always off the key. It is important.” To order them to be silent was impossible for kindly Professor Shaw. Besides, their reaction might be more strident whistling. He thought of a ruse. For the university daily he wrote an article shaming whistlers in general. But the paper did not print it. Last week some New York University students who work as “campus” correspondents for the local dailies were be wailing the scantiness of university news. Professor Shaw dug up and gave them his diatribe against whistling. “I never dreamed such a thing would cause such a stir,” roared he last week. “But it’s a good thing. It keeps the world from becoming too much upset over such things as the gold standard and the world series.”

* Funk & Wagnalls ($2).