Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK HP HE mechanism of education now reveals itself, to ¦*¦ expert, bystander and mere victim alike, as not so much in need of repair as in grave danger of being scrapped for entirely...
...It has given thousands of Blow Germans something to applaud, has proved that the impartiality of American sport is above suspicion, and now stands midway between New York and Berlin very like one of those colored pins which boys attach to fishing corks...
...This loss is all the more extraordinary in a period of undoubted depression and hard times...
...It was assumed that the child would train himself— that he would suddenly burst into reading, or blossom out one fine afternoon as a budding physicist...
...The "measurement standard" was likewise useful...
...FURNIFOLD M. SIMMONS, since 1901 a Senator and in absolute control of North Carolina politics, has been overwhelmingly defeated in the Democratic primaries of his state...
...Now an infinitely more complex task has been attacked in the same scholarly spirit...
...It sponsored the utterly sound notion that classification is an essential need in mass education...
...Felix Fuld, of Newark, New Jersey, have given $5,000,000 toward the establishment of Bamberger's an instituti°n devoted entirely to scholar • • arship and research...
...No undergraduate will be admitted, and the donors hope their foundation will not turn into an exaggerated normal school...
...perhaps it deserves some profound moral...
...that this personality receive in turn a unified training, envisaging all the central purposes of life...
...and to those who are in search of a proper vacation haunt it can only be recommended as the safest bet with which we are familiar...
...Eight of the actions involve stocks listed on the New York Exchange...
...It would seem so...
...Yet it recommends another step in the direction of self-government, a limited dominion status...
...Those most widely concerned with it may point with pride to a series of genuine reforms which abolished cut and dried class-room habits...
...Today the poor results are June 25, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 203 Senator Simmons fairly obvious to those who look with a modicum of care...
...It is solved by the typically American expedient of bidding for promising material...
...It says what everyone has long known, that India cannot govern herself competently for many years to come...
...Students with superior records-are learning to play one offer against another...
...It has been interpreted as a belated endorsement of Smith, as a personal revolt against Simmons, as the final gasp of North Carolina democracy, as a realignment of the state under its old party allegiance...
...Morgan is undoubtedly right in feeling that the system is inequitable and undignified...
...We have recently heard of an even more dire and diabolical machination on the part of the Holy Father...
...The only nationalist answer is that bad independence would be preferable to any form of British dependence...
...The recipient "would then be free to use his funds in any reputable institution of his own choice...
...His figures are Suckers staggering...
...And the public always estimates one cosmic failure higher than a dozen modest successes...
...and—by no means unimportant —several items of hitherto unfamiliar jargon...
...He outlines a scholarship trust, to receive endowments and assign scholarships to those applicants who merit them by virtue of mental quality and character...
...The Passing Immediate change is, of course, unlikely...
...One cannot help wishing so altruistic an enterprise the success it deserves, yet one wonders...
...This is fairer, of course, to both the "reputable institution" and the scholar than the system of making a man's choice of his alma mater a closed commercial transaction...
...But though learning oozes from virtually every pore of the Summer School, its chief purpose is doubtless to furnish a retreat where meditation and improvement of the whole man may be sought in a genuinely Catholic society...
...Morgan, "are applied to the virtual purchase of students on a competitive basis in the open market...
...The public, he says, has lost $25,000,000 in fraudulent securities, by investing in 333 worthless corporations, against all of whom his bureau has taken action...
...State and municipal universities with nominal tuition fees are struggling with increasing student bodies, says Dr...
...and that such a training depend upon a correlation of finished and formative individuals in a business of give and take...
...They trust that it will be a dwelling place for scholars and scientists who shall advise students of high intellectual attainment in the pursuit of learning...
...Nevertheless it is probably unworkable on any scale that would meet the situation...
...Ended by a foul blow almost as quickly as it was begun, it seemed to 80,000 assembled spectators very nearly the most expensive fiasco of a generation...
...But method for method's sake—which was what the control of the educational system by the "psychologists" amounted to—inevitably led to considering the child only an interesting subject for experimentation...
...Practically everyone who has figured as a Catholic student of world affairs or the humanities has, at some time or other, lectured to Cliff Haven audiences...
...It is over a hundred years ago that Lord Durham's system of empire government had led to the British North American Act, a monument of constitutional wisdom...
...Nor did the Republicans show gains in strength...
...1 HIS will produce mixed feelings in most readers...
...All sorts of conclusions have been drawn as to this extraordinary event...
...Boys and girls were fascinating things to watch, and they were consciously so placed that watching them was easier and more amusing...
...JVlETHOD led us eventually to a kind of education road which kept going round and round all the while...
...OPENING its sessions once again on June 29, the Catholic Summer School of America may look back with a great deal of satisfaction upon thirty-eight years of fruitful and interesting activity...
...Morgan, but in many of the smaller institutions this condition is reversed, and enrolment is actually shrinking...
...Of course the situation described is less than ideal...
...One hears of "Young" Republicans, "Young" Democrats, who are disgusted with the group of elder statesmen whom the country seems to have outgrown...
...This is true of all its branches except the applied sciences and, possibly, the law...
...Toplitzky of u r , Notre Dame, the picture in question, was evidently another version of the time-honored formula represented more remotely by Brown of Harvard, and more recently by Annapolis and the two or three other current pictures about West Point and Princeton college life...
...Whereas the older pedagogues had sinned by imagining that if everybody were subjected to the same process they would emerge virtually equal, the newer ones assumed that if nobody were subjected to any process all would emerge different...
...First, the development of method...
...Or their high-school principals will, in effect, conduct the transaction for them by advising this or that college: "ProBidding for Scholars 204 THE COMMONWEAL June 25, 1930 vide scholarships, or my better students will be advised to go elsewhere...
...its fame has spread even to the Old World...
...We followed the daily avoirdupois reports of the principals...
...SlR JOHN SIMON'S committee has made public its unanimous report...
...c \/t ..u a So vast an army of teachers, so wideor Method , . , £ spread a network of properties, cannot suddenly be switched from one direction to another...
...Scholarship funds," according to Dr...
...It is to find a habi^ tat in New Jersey, and to be known as the Institute for Advanced Study...
...Would it not be a good idea to rule that any boxer guilty of a foul should go home as penniless as the fans go unsurfeited ? At any rate, those of us who read the papers learned a great deal...
...Even nature—which in the neighborhood of Lake Champlain need offer no apology for itself—appears to have taken on added grace during more than three score seasons...
...There were over 300,000 Democratic voters to less than 50,000 Republicans...
...This rumor is so ingenious— and therefore, of course, so worthy of credence—that we cannot forbear letting our readers hear of it...
...VvE TEND to think of American colleges with larger and larger enrolments, as we think of American cities with larger and larger populations...
...We are inclined to suppose it merely a rather large scale demonstration of several old adages too commonplace to bear repetition, adages so unchangeably true that legislation can never make them less familiar...
...Now it is a matter of public record that several directors of General Motors are wicked papists...
...Anyone acquainted with academic history knows that the University already has a long and distinguished record of scholarship...
...Conceded, if you like, that contemporary fondness for heavyweight bouts is one of the mysteries of prevailing culture, expressing a remarkable willingness to spend a lot of money and time on stupid entertainment...
...And what were those aims...
...They do not expect to construct any elaborate plant—libraries, laboratories, etc...
...discovered how many bad prophets have jobs as sports writers...
...There has been some talk lately of an action brought by the Yellow Taxi Company against those associated companies, all roughly described as "General Motors...
...One reason for the prevailing reticence, no doubt, is the circumstance that so many scholars have turned out to be ghastly messes in such fields...
...This year's list of speakers ranges from a veteran missionary in India to the chief probation officer of a metropolitan city...
...Measurement likewise led steadily to behaviorism, and behaviorism is simply an impasse...
...About $1,500,000—just 6 percent—of the total loss has been saved for unfortunate investors...
...The fact remains: a crowd out to see fifteen or more rounds of aggressive boxing is entitled to more than the Sharkey-Schmeling caterers served...
...In America it is sadly true that scholarship has no acknowledged use except in connection with education...
...Yet the facts are otherwise, as is shown by Arthur E. Morgan, the president of Antioch College, writing in the Atlantic Monthly...
...DEPRESSION is in the air, but nothing is so thoroughly inoculated with it as boxing...
...Second, the adoption of the "measurement standard" in adjudging pupils...
...It has been tried, tested and never found wanting during several decades...
...The intensive drives for money which have become a feature of college administration are partly the result of a wish "to compete successfully in this bidding...
...It is further alleged by the complainants that these concessions have been obtained by dire threats and most foul intimidation...
...Senators Heflin and Simmons are the first to fall...
...lN A recent issue of The Commonweal Mr...
...This action of the Notre Dame officials is a dignified and admirable assertion of the proper balance...
...Assistant attorney-general watson WASHBURN of New York state has just made public the report upon the activities of the $25,000,000 State Bureau of Securities for the first Worth of six months of 1930...
...And yet it is such a startling reversal of another state of things that we were recently asked to deplore—the hiring of athletes out of scholarship funds to live at colleges for four years under the guise of students— that it is amusing and perhaps a little gratifying, too...
...Evidently $25,000,000 of somebody's was found, not for foolish investment, but for investment which the slightest careful investigation would have shown to be equivalent to throwing the money away...
...What one means, rather, is that the aims which have been most prominent in educational theory during the past quarter century are almost certain to be discarded...
...His suggestion for meeting it is ingenious, if open to certain obvious criticisms...
...Perhaps this is a sign of A State Document the times...
...On all sides we hear the demand that personality be respected as a unity underlying scattered manifestations of nerves, instincts or intelligence...
...The Paramount studio seems to have relied on this tradition, and on Notre Dame's unique prowess on the gridiron, for securing the pleased cooperation of the University authorities...
...It seems that the Terminal Taxi Company, a General Motors subsidiary, has obtained most of the railroad and pier concessions in New York, thereby depriving the Yellow Taxi Company of very valuable assets...
...There is no longer anything to be said "in behalf of" the Cliff Haven idea...
...The number of buildings has increased greatly, facilities of all sorts have been improved...
...It depends on a central scholarship fund, and that depends on the willingness of rich alumni to contribute...
...Sir John's report is not in the least sensational...
...learned to know the intellectual characteristics of two leading citizens...
...The problem of maintaining a high standard of scholarship thus becomes acute...
...There seems to be a movement all over the country against the older leaders, focusing on the prohibition question...
...The idea of sending out scouts, not for tacklers and sprinters, but for Greek sharks and calculus hounds, is not without its charm...
...The one hope for a peaceable solution of the whole question is that the calm justice and reason of the report will gradually induce the major part of Indian opinion to abandon extreme views and to cooperate with the British in the difficult task of making the millions of their oriental empire fit for self-government...
...But the norms which it established were incomplete, if not wholly wrong...
...His successful opponent, Josiah W. Bailey, is a young man, who conducted his campaign entirely on the issue of party regularity and the Simmons desertion of Al Smith in 1928...
...And it is said that the whole reason for the existence of Terminal taxis is not at all to provide an outlet for Buick cars—far too simple a motive, of course—but merely to insure the Pope adequate and sympathetic taxi facilities when His Holiness decides to move the Vatican to Washington and has, in the process, to cross New York City from a steamship pier The Profits of Summer Another Popish Plot to Pennsylvania Station...
...Indeed it is amazing in itself that legislation has been able to achieve a 6 percent return on fools' money— even though that 6 percent comes only once in the course of a lenghty lifetime...
...However, Dr...
...And while rich alumni often love their own colleges well enough to give them fortunes, it is doubtful if they have, as a class, the abstract passion for scholarship which would lead them to give fortunes impersonally to be used for building up the prestige and usefulness of "any reputable institution" in the country...
...IT IS interesting that the University of Notre Dame has refused to lend itself to the making of a football film designed (among other things) to A Right &ive '*¦ w'^e Publicity...
...We are rather happy, of course, to think that as much A Fairly as there is of a crown has gone to Max Expensive Schmeling...
...It had completed a number of scenes, and invested a considerable sum of money, before applying for permission and help in making the campus sequences...
...WEEK BY WEEK HP HE mechanism of education now reveals itself, to ¦*¦ expert, bystander and mere victim alike, as not so much in need of repair as in grave danger of being scrapped for entirely new apparatus...
...Method needed to be investigated...
...From both points of view, therefore, we almost arrived at a point where the educator was unimportant...
...Is it possible that when money cannot be made readily in rational enterprises, fraudulent stocks find a ready market...
...The University courteously regretted, but it felt that its function was to secure celebrity not through athletics but through scholarship...
...LOUIS BAMBERGER and his sister, Mrs...
...So long as this condition continues, one wonders how fully such an institution will fulfil its founders' purposes...
...Only one thing can be asserted with some certainty...
...Harvey Wickham drew attention to an indubitable relation between Moscow and the Pope...
...If we live long enough we may witness a comforting processional of parents away from the psychotherapists toward a first-rate teacher...
...there will doubtless soon be others...
...The fight, however, was a woeful affair...
...Assuming that a personality does what it is, the behaviorists could not alter the doing...
...The answer to its application must have come as something of a shock...
...The $25,000,000 is only a little less than the total lost during the whole of 1929...
...Once more British statesmanship has shown itself capable of a masterly document, written with all the objective sense of values and justice of an Aristotelian politics, yet produced in times of grave crisis and trouble...
...But it also has, in common with two or three other seats of higher learning, an immediate problem arising out of the superexcellence of its athletics and the wildfire appeal which they make to a sports-crazed public...
...It is time our society began to find more adequate use for scholars and pure scientists in business and public life...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 8
