MEANS TO THE END

It has been the misfortune of many of the experimental colleges of the past either to attempt a radical curriculum in a conservative institution, or to start independently, with the obstacles that face every new college multiplied by the natural inertia of the public in accepting an untried form of education. The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs is in a position unfettered by either of these hindrances. Its schedule will combine freedom from hide-bound methods with coordination instead of haphazard choice in the extensive field it will cover; nor does it face the danger of impracticality, since the subjects are potentially as valuable in post-graduation activities as most in present curricula.

The Harvard organism would not permit the foundation of such a school for undergraduates, and it is doubtful if it could take a place among the increasingly professional graduate schools; but the system of concentration and distribution already offers a basis on which a similar structure can be built. The field History and Literature is the most logical parent of such a system; it should be possible to develop particularly study of the current aspects of world affairs and literature, to broaden the attention given to the phenomena of the present. But to make such broadening effective, the next two points of the Princeton program are incomplete measures. Visiting lectureships and exchange professorships are much in vogue here; and rightly; by them, as by no other method, can an immediacy of view be obtained. Yet the permanence of a liberal curriculum can be assured only by the quality of the permanent faculty. No annual turnover, even of high-class instruction, replaces the constant inspiration of able teachers who have become adjusted to the University, and whose understanding of the purpose of such study is supplemented by their competence to supervise it.