Education Takes Stock
.9 i of the group of passengers making the inaugural trip, and hence one of the chief sendees, was Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, now Washington counsel to the Aviation Corporation, which helps to...
...What teacher, or what com-bination of teachers, elementary, high school and uni- versity, has half the educational opportunity of any combination of national advertisers ? Yet of all the agencies through which ideas are spread, it is the only one not subject to control...
...9 i of the group of passengers making the inaugural trip, and hence one of the chief sendees, was Mrs...
...That was a turn of things to be resented...
...Gone are the old abstractions, in a dozen branches, which could be pasted upon the child mind without regard either for human individu- ality or the concrete structure of the world...
...That propaganda should disappear because it has ceased to be funny, even to risibilities which are always primed and cocked...
...Programs are never the most satisfactory evidence of virility...
...Today the sisterhoods have learned to know and to estimate properly such special- ists...
...A given job had to be done in a hurry--or, it may be well to say, a first-aid station was, for the time being, more essential than a hospital...
...Scientific research, for instance, came to occupy a definite place in the curriculum, and older class-room methods no longer sufficed...
...Mabel Walker Willebrandt, now Washington counsel to the Aviation Corporation, which helps to operate the new combination system...
...They attacked it courageously, in a spirit of faith and loyalty...
...We must bear in mind, however, that circumstances called for a relatively makeshift organization which could assimilate many students with diverse backgrounds and limited opportunities...
...The very fact that the Association has had for its president such a man as the Reverend J. W. R. Maguire is a fine proof of its discernment, and there are several similar proofs...
...Their superi- ors, moreover, have grasped the importance of these notions and are far more willing to authorize the sac- rifice of time and funds required than they would have been ten years ago...
...But one feels a measure of confidence that, at any rate, the right road has actually been found at last...
...We wish him luck because his success in this matter might make it somewhat easier to con- trol the activities of all mischief-making advertisers, some of them quite as disagreeable as the tobacco com- panies...
...Moreover, there was need for an entirely different orientation toward basic educational attitudes...
...The influence of Dr...
...Few people under- stood that the specialist in administrative method or in any branch of study could bring to the institution something of real value...
...And in time it comes to affect our sense of values...
...Shields has grown constantly since his death, and to it other leaders have added a very great deal...
...The schools, on the other hand, manifest clearly a high regard for nature--in so far as personality is nature...
...And we wish him luck because his job may not be an easy one...
...Nevertheless the schools now actually have purposes of which they are conscious, and these purposes are in a measure adequate to contemporary needs...
...How difficult it is to build up a flourishing college is no longer a secret into which only a few have been initiated...
...Years ago that ideal was compounded of only a few definite tasks...
...Both displayed the competent lightness of those who have not the habit nor the manner of defeat...
...They would have expected the urban- ity fairly to crackle, as crackle it did...
...Finally, one may say that the specifically Catholic scholastic ideal has grown much clearer and more con- crete...
...Scientific accu...
...If development proceeds normally, a great deal of the tension now existing in th'e Catholic educational territory will be eliminated...
...Critics are able, naturally enough, to suggest a multitude of im- provements in every department...
...and we predict that, a generation hence, it will seem as incredible that educa- tional establishments should be without the services of eminent lay teachersmunder the conditions which pre- vail elsewhere--as it would seem now if hospitals sud- denly disbanded their medical staffs...
...And so one may hope for a new willingness to co6perate in the progress not of individual Catholic systems, but of the Catholic educational endeavor properly so called...
...But it was certainly no worse than hundreds of flimflam experiments and re-cipes which have been tried out in education proper during the past troubled years...
...And hundreds, at least, among our educators realize the organic character of the Faith--see clearly that it is a life which can assimilate all other good things naturally, securely and profitably...
...However, honors were not quite even...
...A great burden was suddenly added to the work of elementary teaching, itself tremendously increased...
...It may be that room for improvement is still plentiful...
...He has introduced a resolution to this effect, and in its success lies about the only hope for the disappearance of propaganda which suggests the high social advantages of leanness, and the ease with which it can be secured through the substitution of nicotine for food...
...To sum up what they have accomplished is not to count degrees or credits...
...The sis- terhoods did not retreat from the really baffling prob- lem...
...In the second place, relations between the sisterhoods and laymen in academic life were meagre, indeed, when the new educational adventure began...
...The drift is as apparent in Catholic education as anywhere else...
...For it is trying not only to identify a need with the means of gratification, but to create a need where none exists...
...Certainly no superabundance of ability exists anywhere in Amer- ican education...
...Work in quantity remains to be done before even a single educational situation may be termed ideal...
...and that deluge is now receding...
...The demand for teachers--and not merely any sort of teachers--imposed the necessity for exten- sive and multiform training...
...Though other institutions have, no doubt, an equal right to existence, this one is necessarily an index to the state of all...
...A magazine which publishes a shady story will be barred from the mails, but it may fill half its space with misleading advertisements and circulate freely...
...This year's meeting of the Catholic Educational Convention is the twenty-sixth...
...And who will deny that the successful prexy of today could have earned his fame among bankers...
...For a time the notion that military, athletic, theatrical, operatic, literary and life-saving abilities could all be developed by the systematic use of cigarettes was the second-best of our national jokes, bettered only by the fact that there existed military, athletic, theatrical, op- eratic, literary and life.saving notables willing to lend their portraits and their signatures to the spreading of that notion...
...And so one may fairly conclude that a very real approach to fundamentals has been achieved...
...Today it has, relatively speaking, been explained...
...In other respects, too, normalcy seems with- in reach...
...The tendency to found new schools and institutions before those already established have had a chance to grow is diminishing...
...The effect of his constant eloquence reaching at our desires from every angle during our waking hours-- from the pages of the newspaper at breakfast, from the bill-boards all about us as we take a turn in the air, from the sky signs at night--is not restricted so abso- lutely as all this...
...The inefficacy of the first attack is a little frightening...
...It is to estimate how much of virility and value they have added to their educational discipline, to pass on in turn to recurrent student groups...
...More...
...Censorship...
...Preach-ers and professors, the ladies' clubs and the parent- teacher associations, even organizations of advertising men themselves, have delivered stout blows...
...Let us have some cen- sorship of advertising...
...It is, for in- stance, a good sign that the Catholic University of America has recently gained so much ground in the public eye...
...This must be termed, in its own way, a fairly bad performance...
...It was understood that students must be "instructed in their religion," but the meaning of this phrase remained lamentably vague...
...Several of the newer colleges for women are actually supervised by laymen...
...For while everyone upon our limited horizon is hammering away these days at the unscru- pulous advertiser, what ground the enemy has given up is not measurable by our unmicroscopic scales...
...Willebrandt was trying to dry up the Mayor's city, might have looked for tense silences and tightened lips on this occasion...
...Now the really surprising and gratifying thing to note is that at least a number of sisters have come out of this process with first-rate notions of what academic development and research really mean...
...He would empower the Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration to exercise the same control over de-ceptive statements made through advertising media that it now exerts in preventing the use of misleading labels on food and drug containers...
...It influences him as soon as he is able to read, and it keeps close to him long after he is through with schools...
...There can be no doubt that the advertiser influences us about more things than the merit of his product...
...No outsider can estimate, for instance, the extent to which religious talk has given way to religious prac- tice...
...But both jokes wore thin, as jokes do, and besides we discovered that the tobacco companies were making money while we laughed at them...
...The result was a deluge of quackery...
...In the graduate schools, respect for form has staked out its imperial claim...
...Here two things are particularly significant and val- uable...
...We have, of course, spoken of the sisterhoods because of their representative value, and not because there is no virtue elsewhere...
...racy, strict limitation of the enrolment in numbers and purposiveness, and mastery of research method are stoutly demanded...
...In entrusting to the lady's care a bottle of water--said to be taken from the Atlantic and destined to mingle with the Pacific, to symbolize the occasion: but still a bottle of water-- the gentle- man is one sly and successful gesture up...
...Those familiar with the personal styles, so to speak, of the two main personalities, would have known better...
...Finally, problems of administration have been defined frankly...
...We wish Senator Smoot luck because he is trying to tie the hands, chain the feet and gag the mouth of a practical joker...
...Chaos attacked the universities and schools in the guise of students in droves and teachers selected by necessity...
...We believe the time has come for a vote of confidence in Catholic education, even though this ought to leave no one unaware of the difficulties to be surmounted or of the pitfalls which hedge in the road...
...Already one may note sure signs of a new stabilization...
...This stabilization is all to the good...
...That may be only a beginning, but it is a sound and gratifying beginning...
...BILL-BOARD TUTORSHIP S ENATOR SMOOT would extend the Food and Drugs Act to tobacco and tobacco products...
...Com- plete fulfilment of this hope may be long deferred, but it must and (we think) will come...
...It is the final educator of the average citizen...
...One might have wished that the graduate schools to which these sisters turned had been less hastily assembled and more competently staffed...
...These two occurrences are undoubtedly genuine and promise to be permanent...
...Those cognizant of the bare situation a few months back, when Mrs...
...The organization is maturing in years as well as in outlook, but the best and most sincere compliment that can be paid to it is that it seems younger than ever...
...EDUCATION TAKES STOCK A BOUT the only real diamond-stickpin-novelty that drifted into the area of education during the past season was Professor Rogers's "extemporaneous speech" to the graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
...What counts supremely is the work done behind the scenes by men who have come to grips with actual problems...
...It is no longer popular, excepting among the benighted, to suppose that pedagogy is merely a synonym for starving in a gentlemanly way...
...Movies and books are censored...
...Twelve years ago, the teaching sisterhoods confronted an exceedingly baffling problem...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 8
