AN EDUCATIONAL PAGEANT

In an otherwise febrile and careless issue of the Harkness Hoot appears a forceful broadside against the Yale School of Drama. In this trenchant indictment of a strictly vocational institution glorified by an attractive title into a School of arts, the writer charges that the present institution was founded by money from Wall St. Alumni for the sole purpose of advertising their alma mater through its possession of a superior School of Drama.

The charges of the article are unfortunately true not only of the school in question but of the average so-called art schools in American Colleges. Embryo artists, instead of being afforded opportunities of self expression, are encouraged to become academic and attentive to technical details. Such a policy is decidedly "dangerous to the cause of true art", for it "dulls the awareness of the artist", and "multiplies the amount of insincere, seventh-hand, adulterated art" so characteristic in most fields today.

That drama is an art cannot well be denied, and that it is therefore entitled to a place on the curriculum of Liberal Colleges naturally follows. But as the study of any art, the study of Drama should be one of self-expression and originality not of slavish imitation. In this the Yale School of Drama has, to all accounts, singularly failed. But the chief criticism of the school lies not so much in succumbing to this universal weakness as in the application of the name "Art" to a school strictly vocational in method and purpose. Yale has added more weight to the charges of Dr. Flexner that the chief worship of American colleges is not a cultural education but the dollar.