Conant Sees Humanities Study Entering New Era

"In the next few decades college teaching of the humanities will undergo great changes and will flourish as never before," predicted President Conant last night.

In an address at the Statler Hotel before the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges, President Conant said that he foresaw "an exacting period of change" by which the teaching of art, literature, and general philosophy will be brought into closer relationship with a greater number of students than ever before.

No 'Rear-Guard Action'

"Those who speak as if the humanities were fighting a rear-guard action in these days of science and technology and the common man," he said, "misunderstand the current scene."

Stressing the fact that until recently the study of the humanities was virtually restricted to a small leisure class, Conant urged that this field should now "be stripped as far as possible of the snob appeal so characteristic of so much of it in the past . . .

"No small groups of youths in each generation can any longer be counted on to be the arbiters of taste or the allies of the humanitist in his work as a transmitter of cultural knowledge," he asserted.

Confident of New Leaders

President Conant expressed his confidence that future humanities professors will be able to bring about the necessary shift of emphasis in arts and letters from the more memorization of "the current gilded dogma" to a relation of the humanities "to the personal problems of man and the welfare of modern society.

"The younger generation of teachers understands the implication . . . of the expanded scope of American education.

Federal Aid Seen

In reference to the problems posed in all fields of higher education by the greatly increased number of students who will apply for college training of some kind--not only veterans but "their younger relatives," President Conant predicted large-scale programs of government financial aid, both state and federal.

"I envisage public moneys being used to meet the educational demands of the next decade . . . to improve our public school system by Federal aid, to expand and improve those institutions which provide a terminal two-year post-high school education locally and to institute a federally financed scholarship for medical and pre-medical students, engineers, and a few other professions,' he stated.