Ivy vs. Brick

Catering to the mob or to the individual; which course shall the college curriculum pursue? John Hurd, Jr., of the English department, adds more dry tinder to the fire of the issue in an article in The Intercollegiate for November, in which he rudely destroys the cherished tradition of Oxford as an educational millenium.

Mr. Hurd merely presents an analysis of Oxford's personal methods, based upon the personality of the tutor, as delineated in contrast to the stamping mold of American college machinery. He attacks the Oxford system for the boredom and indifference which thirty years of monotonous repetition forces upon even the best of tutors.

For cutting the mystically hazy aura which has enshrouded the charm of Oxford's weathered stones and deeply rooted ivy, we are grateful. There has been too much affected anglomania in our seats of learning. Discontent with our mongrel methods has painted the British pastures a brighter hue of emerald green.

For the American college environment is the shrine of mob worship of molded standards. Its heroes are individuals who are still of the campus. Its inflexible axiom lets those who deviate suffer in the pillory of mob spite. In such an atmosphere confirmed anglophiles are only pitiful.

To Mr. Hurd Dartmouth and Harvard have achieved the ideal combination of American environment and English methods; the brisk efficiency of our group methods has been well mated with individualism for upperclassmen.

But after all aren't these attempts to bring American college machine to Robot-perfection too mechanistic and grubby? Unless treated as a professional school, college should attempt to do little more than awaken an interest in other people's grooves. In the mad rush for marks, details, for true-false examinations, authoritative quotations and the like, no one seems to lift his eyes above the Library spire. College should be sipped and enjoyed as a liqueur and not gulped down as rot-gut gin for pure animal excitation.

We're sorry Mr. Hurd, but we prefer individualism. --The Dartmouth.