PRESIDENT LOWELL'S REPORT

President Lowell, in his Annual Report to the Board of Overseers, stresses the importance of a general education as a training for life. His words should strengthen the conviction of those college men who are confronted with feelings of restlessness and misgivings that they are wasting their time here in College when they might be preparing for a trade.

A specialized training for a job has certain advantages. It teaches a man to do one thing efficiently and to stick to it. Here at College one is too likely to skim over surfaces, entirely neglecting the really important things which lie beneath. The student finds himself confronted with a maelstrom of ideas out of which it is hard for him to separate the wheat from the chaff. He finds it hard to maintain his convictions when such excellent arguments confront him on the other side.

But in after life his ideas, subjected to all kinds of tests at college, crystalize in new convictions. It is the function of college to make him suspend judgment until he has a wider range of material on which to build more mature decisions. The man who goes through his undergraduate training with an "idee fixe," intolerant of others' opinions; the man who is sure of himself and his ideas, is missing the true point of higher education.

What, some may ask, is the advantage of being broad? Isn't it the hard headed practical man with a single-track mind who increases the productivity and prosperity of the nation? These questions must be answered in a satisfactory way if we are to justify "a broader college education."

While the man with the practical single-track mind may develop great efficiency in his own business, he has not the breadth of view to link it up with the businesses of others. Some one must be available to fit the cogs into their proper places in the elaborate economic system of the country. This requires a broader mind. The college offers such a mind a greater chance to mature.

Moreover, as President Lowell points out, it is the college man who must cope with the problems of the future, and the college training teaches him to expect and to meet new situations. He is, moreover, better prepared for leadership than those who have not gone to college. This was clearly brought out by the ability of college men to adapt themselves to the duties of officers in the war. And, finally, a general education makes a man more stimulating and helpful in his friendship and better able to give advice in the light of a true perspective.

The deeper significance underlying President Lowell's report, however, is that the college can not train men to be broad; it can only offer them the material with which to train themselves. Most of the failures of graduates to make good in life must be attributed to a failure to get what the University had to offer. At no other American college is there available so much intellectual stimulus as here at Harvard, and no where else is a man thrown so much on his own resources intellectually. This is especially true in the matter of wide reading and of the interchange of ideas through discussion. Undergraduates are not urged to "go out" for discussion clubs; whatever part they take in such invaluable training must be spontaneous. And, beyond this, the undergraduate must train himself to apply efficient methods to a concrete problem; a training which the technical school supplies. For without a practical grasp of detail no amount of broad tendencies and ideas can be put to a useful purpose.

The burden of being able citizens and justifying a broader education rests very much with ourselves.