Early Editorial Reaction Favors Committee Report Unanimously

Immediate editorial reaction to the Report of the University Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society in local and New York papers has been largely colorless and unanimously approving. Representatives of foremost educational thought in America, leaders at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago, and St. Johns, polled by the SERVICE NEWS this week replied in a majority of cases that they had not yet studied the Harvard proposals sufficiently to comment.

Alvin Johnson, of New York's New School for Social Research, has been the first great educator to submit comment on the Report. While slyly taking exception to the rich mixture of simile found in the book, he praised its wisdom, its comprehensive scope, and its readability.

One excerpt from the mass of newspaper comment follows:

Boston Herald, July 24: "The snap reaction to the report of the Harvard Committee . . . is that this completes a cycle. We had out long period of educational rigidity and standardized curricula. Then came the free elective system as perfected by President Eliot. And now we are back again to the ideal of uniformity, if not conformity. The emphasis is to be once more on what is common to all men rather than on what is individual to each.

Traditionalism, Modernism Reconciled

"But there is this difference. The unifying force this time is to be neither religion nor scholasticism, but an expression of the common heritage of western civilization, modified by the new faith in experiment and research. It is to be a reconciliation of traditionalism and modernism.

"The great cultural currents are understood best as reactions to previous excesses. There is ample evidence that we have been indulging in something resembling anarchy in education. Beginning in the high school, we have blocked off our young people into small groups, sending them into this or that vocational specialization or into uncoordinated electives. The result has been an education in disunity. What social cohesiveness is left is vocational. Bank- ers speak the language of bankers and lawyers are most comfortable in the society of other lawyers."

"It may seem as if the Committee's proposals for prescribed curricula are antithical to freedom. But a sound democracy can be built only on an informal and intelligent electorate, and specialism does not dispose to political sophistication. A mathematician can be victimized by a Huey Long, whereas, as William James said, an educated person knows a good man when he sees one.

"The essential liberalism of the Harvard committee shines out from every page of the report. . . . 'General Education,' as this committee means it, will be far more exacting than the specializations of today.