ANTIOCH-ITIS

The newest convert to the cause is always the most enthusiastic, which is probably the reason why the Reverend F. C. Potter, who has left a New York church to become the Secretary of the Friends of Antioch in America, views the Ohio college through such rose-tinted glasses. Not content with seeing in Antioch a notable experiment in education, useful in certain definite branches of education, the new secretary wants to establish the Antioch idea as "a basis of American educational institutions", broad enough to include both religion and practical life.

As a college for men and women who expect to enter business when they graduate, the Antioch idea offers a valuable preparation. For six years the undergraduate takes alternate bites, first from the cake of cultural education, then from the crack of business, until his meal has made him, in Bacon's phrase, is a full man." Antioch thus combines scholasticism with worldly experience, and although, because of its dual system, it seldom produces specialists in either field, it does provide a much-needed kind of education. But the claim of Dr. Potter that Antioch furnishes", an education which is religion," an education which will ultimately do away with the churches as it does with the elder universities this must be put down as the commendable exuberance of a convert rather than a well-seasoned conclusion.

Antioch and other educational experiments are important and interesting because they show that education is not static, but they can never comprehend all of education and religion. The elder universities will continue in cloistered seclusion to prepare students for life, is Antioch prepares them in the midst of life.