Conant Wins Ed Council's Writing Prize

SAN FRANCISCO, OCT. 1--President Emeritus James B. Conant '14 tonight was named winner of the book award of the American Council on Education for his book, "The Education of American Teachers."

Conant, who is in Berlin as European educational adviser to the Ford Foundation, was unable to accept the $1000 award in person, but in a letter he expressed hope that "the award signifies a wide acceptance of my pleas for a new look at teacher education."

The award was made at the banquet session of the Council's 47th annual meeting, at which President Pusey presided. Pusey is the outgoing chairman of the Council. Over 1000 college and university presidents and deans are in attendance at the three-day meeting, which is being held west of the Mississippi for the first time.

In a morning session today, David Riesman '31, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Science, told administrators that in today's research-oriented universities, "there is less place and less prestige for the person who regards himself as a reflective and civilized student of his subject without necessarily doing extensive research in it."

Regretfully reporting the disappearance of such "teacher-scholars," Riesman viewed with some unhappiness the entangling growth of specialization on both the student and faculty levels. "One could make a nice study of the lengthening amount of time spent at conventions as the [academic] guilds grow larger and more affluent and need to have more time for papers," he noted.

"We could envisage the day," said Riesman, "When all the trees in the Canadian forest are being cut down not for the Sunday New York Times but for the 'physical abstracts' and the tens of thousands of professional journals to which all but a handful of people then living will be contributing."

Riesman saw encouraging signs, however, in the efforts of magor state universities to escape their geographic and tax line boundaries and become national centers, and in the actions of a "small minority" of "compassionate students" to bring attention to human problems.

In their "mission" in civil rights and slum development, Riesman indicated. The students may be showing the university how to re-establish meaningful ties with their communities. "It is ironical that when some universities have become planetary in the sense of sending anthropologists and development experts to "Pakistan or Tanganyika," Riesman said, "their students may be discovering underprivileged people right next door."

During a reception last night, President Pusey told education writers that he hoped the upcoming debate in Cambridge of the Doty Committee Report on General Education would provide a new understanding of the mission of the college and set new landmarks in educational thought.

Tomorrow Dean Monro will discuss expanding educational opportunities for the disadvantaged