THOUGHT

What Dr. Charles H. Maye, the famous surgeon, remarked last week about the future of education is of vital interest. He says that the whole educational system of today must change if it is to prepare the youth for the future. Among a number of things in modern education, he deplores the absence of training in thinking.

It is only too true that there is little emphasis on thought in present day instruction. With the College Board Examinations for secondary schools and the generals in college always looming on the horizon, reason is sublimated to memory, critical thought to an encyclopedic knowledge. Conclusions are taught while the processes by which the conclusions were gained are overlooked. The so-called "Photographic mind" is encouraged while thinking powers are allowed to lie fallow.

The power to think is going to become more and more of an asset. As Dr. Mayo points out, the world is in a condition of ever-increasing change. That which was taught fifty years ago is today ludicrous. That which is being taught today as true, will tomorrow be exploded and superseded by something else. Nothing is certain. What the next generations will be required to know and think can not be foretold. The best equipment a student can have to face the future is not an enormous knowledge of facts, which are sure to change, but rather an ability to assimilate facts, to come to conclusions from handling them, an ability to think. And this should be the ultimate aim of education.