Conant Belittles Hutchins Ideal of Bookish Leisure

"Higher snobbery was the answer President Conant had for the educational philosophy of Chancellor Robert M, Hutchins of Chicago University, at Princeton's sessions on "the Humanistic Tradition in the Century Ahead," as reported by the Associated Press Saturday.

Hutchins had told the assembly of scholars, "If we are not all killed in the next few years (of the atomic age) we will all be bored to death. The Universities will be obsolete if they do not grasp the opportunities to make leisure time worthwhile.

The Joys of Leisure

"Such arguments underestimate the joys of leisure in the U. S. A.," Conant replied according to the report. "To many of us, the scats in the baseball grandstand still look more attractive than those in the reading room of the library.

"And you can't entice us with higher snobbery," he added, looking at Chicago's chancellor, "for if we can all have knowledge for the asking, its snob value is very small."

Humanists will have to sell "we the people" on the value of their knowledge and appreciation of the past, he declared, because "the social and parental pressures that once brought you humanists your well-clothed and well-born pupils no longer hold."