Harvard Health

Prof. Irving Babbitt's article in this month's "Forum," in which he violently attacks the late President Eliot's educational system, has created something like a dignified furore down Cambridge way. The entire article has been reprinted in the Harvard Crimson and has served to stir up endless comment among the surprised but not altogether shocked professorate.

Professor Babbitt is, of course, a faculty member of the very university whose fundamental bases of teaching he so caustically criticizes, and should know somewhat whereof he speaks.....He declares American education, as typified by his university, has been granted so much liberty that it is now approaching license, and advocates a return to a more rigid standards and restrictions.

The majority of Professor Babbitt's anathema is heaped upon "the new extensions of the principles of individual choice" and "the allowance of latitude in the individual." To the average reader, the very principle here implied would seem to be one of the strongest signs of health in Harvard at present. It is undoubtedly due to its presence and influence that a member of the faculty has been able so to criticize his university from within its very walls and command attention not wholly condemnatory. Cornell Sun