PREVENTION BEFORE CURE

It is frequently said that the chief hope of long-run social service work lies in education. Until recently Harvard's social service agency, Phillips Brooks House, made only limited use of this bit of knowledge. Last spring, however, several enterprising Freshmen began the formation of an "undergraduate faculty" whose purpose it was to tutor worthy, underprivileged graduates of high schools in Metropolitan Boston. Lately a system has been inaugurated to the effect that other worthy high school graduates can now be placed under student tutors. If this present increase in the P.B.H. "faculty" is any indication of the future of this experiment, then truly by its undertaking Brooks House has greatly gained in importance as a welfare agency.

Lately there has been some dissatisfaction with Phillips Brooks House and its social service work. The critics charge that P.B.H. wasn't fulfilled to the best of its ability its position as Harvard's welfare organization. For until last year P.B.H. was doing little else but furnishing settlement workers and giving out holiday baskets of food to needy families. The importance of these functions, especially the former one, should not be underrated; it is still important to continue them. But they are really remedies for social ills and scarcely preventatives.

When the "undergraduate faculty" plan was launched last spring, however, P.B.H. at long last started to apply a fundamental cure to a few of the "one-third of the nation who are ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed." With education as their weapon, the student tutors are striking eventually at the reasons for adult perversions. The long-run results of this new program do not bear fruit as yet. But the immediate consequences are equally important. Tutor no less than tutee will benefit from such contacts; it is the "faculty" as well as the pupils who receive the education. Nevertheless the value of the "undergraduate faculty" plan lies mainly in the new constructive attitude of P.B.H. It has realized that prevention is more vital than cure, that preconditioning accomplishes much more than reconditioning. Phillips Brooks House must continue to build new foundations rather than whitewash the old ones.