THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

From the whirlpool of distribution arise occasional cries for a more "practical" education. That liberal education is a myth is the understandable viewpoint of students who have nibbled from all and everything and gained little more than a few points of credit. But when a professor of education propounds this view, it is a sad sign of defeatism--a sign that educators recognize their failure without mustering the courage to combat it. Few would disagree with Professor Brewer's contention that Harvard's liberal education is an adulterated concoction; but this is no reason why Harvard should turn resignedly to handicraft and dentistry as something that the boys can put their fingers on. If Harvard fears that, as a liberal arts college, it has suffered shipwreck, it can still scan the horizon for a savior before dropping to the bottom of the sea.

Thus the faculty committees which struggle with the Herculean task of giving a Harvard education a common content should keep a keen eye on the more or less sweeping reform plans in force at Chicago, St. John's, Columbia, and North Carolina. They should draw their lesson from the experiences of these pioneers, who have spared Harvard the costs of hit-or-miss experimenting. They should not shrink back from the pains of a thorough cure, if they feel that eventually it would put the patient back on his feet. For liberal education has passed beyond the stage where occasional shots of stimulants--half-hearted attempts at integration--are sufficient to hold off its dissolution into chaos. As it stands now, it has lost its meaning, and can only regain it by being rebuilt from the bottom.

As Professor Brewer points out very correctly, undergraduates show their distrust of liberal education by choosing fields of concentration which they imagine to be related to their future occupations. They always end up disappointed, as though they had not been told innumerable times that they should not hope for any practical training in their courses. Convinced that they are unprepared for the future, they continue groping for something that might be of "use." But only a systematized liberal education, an orderly presentation of all human thought, can give them this preparation. If they are to gain a solid stock of knowledge that does not bleach away in old bluebooks, the light of liberal education must be rekindled by every effort.