ALLPORT SEES PROBLEM IN RETURN OF COLLEGE MEN

Hacking up Japs in the wilds of Guadalcanal is certainly not the best preparatory school for a college education, Gordon W. Allport '19, professor of Psychology, admitted yesterday. The problem of what to do with Harvard men who spend the next few years in that occupation brings in a new conception of college life.

"Everything," he said, "depends upon how wisely the students and Faculty prepare for the great D-day." An undergraduate here in the last war, Allport belonged to the first important "war baby" class which had its ranks seriously affected by World War I.

But both the Faculty and the students will have to make important concessions, he stated. "Educational policies shall have to be advanced to a more mature level." Training for professions and services vital in social reconstruction and courses now designed for specialists during the war emergency, should all be continued.

Anticipating a returning post-war class that may have for its prime interests deb parties, social binges and a general escape from the war years, Allport reminded that the student in service can "never expect to resume his former life with any real satisfaction."

What the undergraduate must expect, however, is a period of serious professional and pre-professional training with the old-fashioned idea of just getting a degree just for the degree's sake cast aside as one of the losses of war.

It may be, suggested Allport, that the old idea of liberal education may have to be modified. "Literature and the arts are well worth while," but in some fields like Government, Psychology, and the like, the curriculum may have to be pointed up to compensate for the more practical demands of a more mature class which has already tasted the bitter reality of life.

"But most of all," emphasized Allport, "both students and Faculty should view post-war education as a continuance of the present crusade for a democratic victory." The peace will still have to be won long after the actual warfare has stopped.

"If the students and Faculty view the post-war years as belonging to the same era as the war, with the same objectives to be achieved," there is no reason to expect the fatal let-down that earned the undergrads returning to College after the last war the title of the "lost generation."