EDUCATED--AND INTERESTING

Nobody can answer the question asked by Katherine Fullerton Gerould in the Atlantic Monthly: What constitutes an educated person today? She makes a brave attempt and an exceedingly interesting one to solve the riddle, but it is only one of any number of answers, and may be inadequate she admits. "By and large education presupposes some real study in one or two fields of knowledge, and a shrews suspicion that other fields exist." Add to that the fact that it "is something done to you" and it is evident that if the definition is true, the University's idea of education has come close to the bulls-eye. The concentration part of our system takes care of the real study in one field of knowledge; the distribution arranges for the shrewd suspicion of other fields. And that the whole system is something done to us is the usual opinion.

This sounds like a trivial point of view. As a matter of fact it is nothing of the sort. A thorough knowledge of literature, for instance, will give one a smattering of philosophy and history, and at least a sense of the importance of physics or chemistry--all that is necessary. In these days of specialization the educated man is no longer a Leonardo de Vinci who is an expert in half a dozen professions; in fact he may be notably ignorant of everything except his own line, and still be educated.

To be cultured and interesting is a far different matter, apparently beyond the realm of education, if we come to college only to have something done to us. Fortunately this aspect of education can be questioned. It is true that worldly experience will make a man interesting, and no amount of book-learning will necessarily make him cultured. But is it not also true that many men graduate from the University who are educated and cultured and interesting? How do they do it? Perhaps the answer is that they did not come to Harvard only to have something done to them. They did something for themselves and for the University--a vastly different thing.