A Note on Education

There is a widespread opinion among educators as well as laymen that our larger colleges and universities do not do their jobs as efficiently as they might. Various reasons are advanced for their alleged failure. Some say our huge schools are intellectual filling-stations where culture may be had in any given quantity or quality regardless of the student's gas capacity. The remedies suggested are many, but among the more popular is the one of breaking these inert masses up into smaller colleges after the fashion of Oxford and Cambridge. And it may well be that salvation lies that way. Certainly the system seems to work in England, for like it or not, English universities leave certain characteristic marks on their graduates. One thing they have which must exert a profound effect upon the undergraduates--age and tradition.

Robert Graves the poet, in an article in T. P.'s Weekly on Lawrence of Arabia, gives an account of several quaint and unusual legends of such piquancy that we would have difficulty in matching them.

"All Souls' College allows itself one big celebration every hundred years. The night All Souls' was consecrated, Chichele, it is said, went up on the roof of the college to give thanks to God for the completion of his work. And there he came upon a mallard duck, which was resting there. He gave thanks for the lucky omen, for the mallard was the badge of his family, and told the newly appointed Fellows that once every hundred years, they should all go up on the roof of the college and look for a mallard, and if they found one they should give it entertainment. And they have not forgotten. Once every hundred years, on the first year of each new century, they hunt the mallard on the roof, with ladders and a special mallard-hunting song."

Could there be a more charming and delightful excursion into higher education? But the thing that really convinces us that there is something superior in the English system is the Latin grace which is inscribed in the common room of Wadham, and which celebrates the brown sherry for which that college is famous. It reads, "We thank Thee, O Lord, as for all Thy other mercies, so especially for this, Thy creature, brown sherry."

That, we maintain, is education. --New York World