SELF-INOCULATION

That education has widely degenerated into "the mere acquisition of information" is the charge leveled at American colleges by Dean Landis in his most recent annual report. The charge is not new. It was on the theory that students must be "inoculated with the virus of self-perpetuating education"--which, translated, means inspired to go on, informally, and learn on their own initiative--that President Conant conceived of the American Civilization Plan. On another front, the University of Chicago is attacking the problem by exposing susceptible freshmen to the grand sweep of Knowledge--through mammoth survey courses such as Civilization I. Educators, or the best of them, know of the disease, and are attacking it; but quietly, perhaps unconsciously, students are themselves making the greatest inroads. They are doing so through increased participation in extracurricular activities.

There are, of course, activities and activities. Habitual residence at the Ritz bar may be one of the latter. Others are valuable, but hardly educational in the Conant-Landis-Hutchins sense: Phillips Brooks House might be mentioned. Many others, however, actually do help to readjust the educational balance which is now so heavily on the side of subject matter, so far from the ideal of method.

Cases in point are the Debating Society, the Council of Government Concentrators, the Guardian, the Progressive, the language clubs, the musical organizations, and many others. The Lowell House symposia were excellent examples of informal education at work. The Student Council, with its investigating committees; the Student Union, with its ideological crusades; even the Young Communist League, with its boyish delight in Klan mysticism, all are becoming inoculated with the habit of voluntary investigation, analysis, study--voluntary education.

Farthest from the minds of people so engaged is the idea that they are being educated; if they thought so, many would run, not walk, to the nearest exit. But the fact remains. Here, cramming is rare; tutoring schools, so incredible as to be ridiculous; ghost-writing, pointless. Here is the "essence of the educational process" which "furnishes the student with the tools to learn and the will to know."