EDUCATING FATHER

Temporarily obscured by Vassar's course in marriage, Harvard's lead in educational liberalism has been recaptured by the announcement that a course in child psychology will be given next year. At long last the University has succumbed to the silent protest that the scholars in Cambridge learn how to read and speed but not the science of upbringing. Perhaps the public feels that Harvard men will make poor fathers, or no fathers at all, after seeing them emerge from Widener, bleary eyed and exhausted. Perhaps it feels students should have some other outlet besides riots for their pent-up emotions. Perhaps it doesn't feel.

Now that Vassar realizes that its graduates have a chance of marriage--a realization that seems based upon statistics of a very optimistic nature, its girls will be trained to put up with their husbands; if not to put up, at least to put off. But Harvard, always the institution for supreme but unradical effort, will go even further and train further fathers, or present fathers, to put up with their children as well as to be put out by their wives. Since diplomacy ought to begin at home, it is proper that students should learn to keep the family peace; a Harvard man ought to be able to digest Aristotle and watch the baby with knowing eyes at the same time. Though Vassar may be pardoned for needing to learn about men, it seems doubtful whether those same men can be forgiven for coming to college without preliminary knowledge of child rearing.

The University must be congratulated upon its sympathy and farsightedness.