THE OLD DOG AGAIN

In the Saturday Evening Post for March 21 appears another article by "The Old Dog", carrying on the attack begun last October against Harvard's educational system. The rush of college life, the limitless capacity of professors to assign impossible tasks, and the apparent "cleverness" of Harvard youth to match their wits against those of the professors and win--it is all too much for "The Old Dog"! He is frankly skeptical and concludes that Harvard youth are not becoming educated men.

The one great fallacy of his attack--as seen from the undergraduate's vantage point--lies in a too narrow conception of education. A very large school of educators will be found to agree with "The Old Dog" in regarding education as a process analagous to the charging of a storage-battery. You start with a certain capacity, or void, in the form of a student and proceed to fill it with facts, all neatly catalogued and arranged; and if the capacity is large enough, and if you fill it full enough, the result is an educated man.

"The Old Dog" is quite right in saying that "the younger men are rebelling." They are, indeed, rebelling against this narrow and mediaeval view of education. They have made up their minds that they did not come to college to be "filled". They came to develop themselves to the fullest. They have discovered that they possess not only a brain, but also a body, and an intangible something besides, called for lack of a better word, spirit--the core of personality which animates a man and makes him greater than a clod. Mere assimilation of facts and details, important as this is in providing the basis for intellectual growth, is only one factor in three. The old guard are all too ready to condemn without seeing that it is not evasion but eagerness for more than they are willing to give, which prompts the so-called rebellion. Youth demands a complete man, and will not rest content with a mere third