The New York herald., 1921-07-24
L. S HALF IILITERATE SAYS DEAN IVES!
Heaviest Blame Falls on the Elective System of Study
Holds General Education the Only Sound Base
on Which to Build--Drafts Three Reform
Programmes to Meet Typical Needs in
Colleges---Latin Figures in Each

who admits that he isn't able to collect
his thoughts isn't educated.
Does this seem large programme"
queried Dean West and he answered him
self forcibly: There's time to do all this,
and to do it well, in a college course
There's time also toward the end of every
college course for the student to take up
any simple study in addition for help and
instruction in what he may have come to
consider his special work"
From Rabelais to Herbert Spencer. each
of whom laid down course of study ad
mirable for multiple needs, there have been
innumerable educators who would simplify
if they could not "royalize" the road to
knowledge. The warfare over the classics
is an old one intermittent but apparently
never to end. When famous educators dis
pute together and some of them set up in
place of that clear standard-the classics
pillars Of cloud and of fire known to the
spiritual intuitions we who are of to-day
feel that another wind blows on us. Per
haps even those college presidents who are
discarding the classics measure with re-
gret what they are losing-a serene quality
in letters, a sense of repose, almost, COM
pared with the disturbance now taking
place in all the arts
The Mind Now Demanding
Sufficient Forms of Expression
All is undergoing change. The mind it.
SELF its outlook and it's inlook is demand
ing different forms Of expression. The
purely rational, purely intellectual way of
expression-the calm speech that springs
from calm judgment-no longer satisfies
the uneasy heart of the world 1t is as If
the world lay in a fever and spoke de-
lirium. And to the listeners, eager for
some kind of message" the cryptic oracu-
lar utterance or the half-said thing is
dearest. There are no signs of health
here
Therefore, firm, clear utterance, as of
the early gods, who declared. This shall
ye do and no other" is, perhaps what
the world needs. Such a programme of
education as the one laid down by Dean
West in language that conveys the strong
est possible conviction may be the right
medicine for our intellectual neurosis. He
concluded his outline of a plan for improv
ing the educational system by drawing up
few typical programmes of study to ac-
commodate the leading types of collegians
These are:
First. an all around type founded on
mathematics, science, Latin, Greek, Eng
lish, history, philosophy, economies and
modern language. Second, modern hu-
manistic course. Third a modern scien-
tific course.
The basis of the two latter should be
Latin, and comprise ancient and modern
history, mathematics and science and Eng
lish. In No. the elective work should
be, mainly humanistic, and in the other,
mainly. scientific.
THE crux, in the present situation"
concluded Dean West, "is to hold firmly to
Latin, as the one indispensable guarantee
of a liberal education. The three pro.
grammes outlined should accommodate 90
per cent. of all students in quest of one.
Latin is necessary in all three of them;
II is the main college defence against illit.
eracy."