WELCOME HIGH SCHOOL MEN

At yesterday's session of the State conference of high school principals held in Sanders Theatre, the welcome of the University to the teachers was extended by Professor Henry Wyman Holmes, dean of the Graduate School of Education. The aim of Harvard as well as the aim of any university, Dean Holmes said, must be a public and not a private aim. Otherwise the college is not even worthy of recognition.

Dean Holmes, in reviewing the history of the Graduate School of Education, pointed out the close association which should exist between the school and the State Department of Education. Both institutions have the same problems and the same goal, namely the advancement of civilization through better educational work. Dean Holmes, after frankly deploring the status of teachers in the United States, asserted that the troubles of schools were due basically to the lack of respect, pay and opportunity granted to the teaching profession. Conditions were quite the reverse in France, and before the war in Germany, the result being that the American teacher is less equipped to educate than his European associate.

Dean Holmes then explained that although between 17,000 and 18,000 new high school teachers are needed a year here, only a few hundred are necessary in France and Germany. This demonstrates the importance of training teachers to teach and of interesting young men and women in the profession. The Dean closed with an appeal for teachers to withstand the temptation of offers to become mere administrators with slightly higher salaries when they could be of more service to mankind as educators.