YESTERDAY AND TODAY

The habit of preferring the good old times to the bad ones is so ingrained in human nature that it is customarily and justly discounted as proving nothing. But the comparison which Mr. Bronk makes in the November issue of Scribner's Magazine of the old and new standards of education is worthy of consideration. It cannot prove that the present day curriculum is all wrong in the light of the curriculum of the eighties or nineties, for that would be like judging a Victorian by our present ethical code. According to the lights of this age, education in general is probably pretty much all right. What the comparison does prove, if it proves anything, is that the age is all wrong and that education, as an accompaniment of the age, must suffer accordingly.

In the good old days, according to Mr. Bronk a class in Caesar took great interest in making wooden models of Caesar's bridges. To try such a thing today would only call forth a laugh, mainly because it would be such a waste of time." And therein lies the key to the trouble. A Mr. Hughes says people are "living too fast". Minutes, as if by the touch of Midas, have been turned to gold. The vast economic development of recent years has undoubtedly increased and distributed wealth, but it has also, like all good things, its price. Because it has spread a money fever and because it requires in most of its responsible salaried positions specialists it has driven those who are unable or unwilling to take more time in their schooling specialization mad. And educational institutions throughout the country have been forced to rearrange themselves accordingly.

In doing one good by lessening the numbers of the "Jack of all trades, master of non," this pressure of living has overreached itself in creating the vast number of the "master of one trade, Jack of none." Until a happy medium is struck between these two extremes in business requirements, the general education of the country will continue to have a commercial bent. And the blame for this must be put not on educators but on the hurry of life.

Yet in the made hurly burly of economic tensions, there should still be institutions where young men with the desire to sacrifice a quick start for a wider training may have their desires fulfilled. England is just as busy as America but Oxford and Cambridge continue to pursue "the noiseless tenor of their way". Although institutions like Harvard in this country have been inoculated with the fever, they seem to be tending toward a recovery. Not yet is there much leisure for wide reading, individual thinking, or informal discussions before a fire.' But happily the time should come when those who wish primarily to prepare for living a full and well-rounded life, can find here an education perhaps even more suitable for that then in the "good old days".