Evening star., 1936-03-08
BY PROF. IRWIN EDMAN

To the American mind the pro-
tween a minister and masculine gov
erness He has been regarded half
with affection. half with diSdaln-
the affection and disdain that prac-
tical and pioneering democracy pays
to a group of men apparently content
to spend their lives studying the un-
necessary and tutoring the immature.
The popular picture of the old
fashioned professor was. of course, eX-
aggerated. But it had its elements
of truth The popular picture has
outlived the ld-fashioned professor,
largely because the conditions Of
academic life which produced that pic
ture have so radically changed.
The Order Changeth.
The professor of even quarter
century ago lived, generally speaking,
in clustered community in a small
town, teaching the rudiments of a
classical curriculum remote to young
men whose interests were largely in
college social life and on the athletic
abstruse studies which only other pro-
fessors could understand, and half
teaching the elements of Latin or
Greek or mathematics or English lit
erature to students who came to COL
2ege largely as social holiday before
q career.
Colleges and universities have
changed much in these last 25 years,
and even the small college set in the
New England hills has felt the i'm
press of the metropolitan type. The
role of the professor has expanded
beyond the academic walls. He has
gone into government and industry;
he has written books that are popular
outside the campus; through extern
sion and extramural teaching he has
learned to adapt his language and his
attitude and his manner of exposition
to audiences who are not required to
attend his lectures, to pay enough at
tentlon to pass examinations on what
he suggested that they read, or on
what he said.
New Picture Created.
The economist has been called in as
an expert on municipal or on Federal
finance. The chemist has been the
adjutant OF industry; the teacher of
the humanities has been a publishers
adviser, an editor, and a writer as we'll.
1t used to be said that the old-fash-
Toned lecture system was device that
enabled young men to observe for so
minutes at time the eccentricities
of elderly gentlemen. The professors
are not even elderly as a class any
more. Many of them look and talk
like men of affairs. Some of them
look hardly less collegiate" than their
students.
AS result of all this, and since
the newspaper excitement about the
brain trust at the beginning of the
Roosevelt administration a new popu-
lar stereotype has appeared The
pushing young executive with theories
as to how to reform the world ac-
cording to the blue print of his own
textbooks and his own imagination.
The brisk brain trust" in Washing
ton has come to replace the absent
minded professor of the traditional
college town. The new picture Is. of
course, a rubber stamp and cartoon
as well as the old.
1t is true that law professors are
called in to reshape criminological pro-
cedure and penal reform It is true
that Washington is still filled with
financial and technical counsellors
drawn from the universities. It is a
TACT that professors are involved in
the life OF contemporary society out
SIDE the academic walls in many wavs
more detailed and complex and practi-
cal than was their habit so years ago.
Aware of World.
The professor is less distinguishable
from men in other professions. Even
those who stay in the universities and
colieges-and it must be remembered
that this includes most of the pro-
1essor1ate-are more aware of the
world they are living in and the
problems 1t has to solve than were
their predecessors of 25 or so years
ago. They relate their speciality to
the problems of contemporary life;
they realize the connection between
the academy and the society which
makes the academy possible. They
connect their ideas with their human
consequences, and even philosophers
John Dewey is notable example
think that ewes philosophy is justified
only in its human fruits.
Yet for all this really marked and
decisive change in the atmosphere of
the professoriate, it must be remarked
that, broadly speaking, the professor
OF today realizes, as he always did,
that he has two main jobs-the ad-
vancement Of knowledge and thought
In his speciality. and the education of
the young in or through his branch
of learning. He. regards himself as
teacher and revealer, and as an
intellectual explorer.
Better At His Job.
It is all to the good that he is not
completely lost in specialized irrele-
vance. He is a better teacher and a
better research worker for being aware
of the changes going on in the
contemporary world in which both
teaching and research alone can take
place. He is less likely to get lost
in meaningless minutiae, and his very
awareness of the world around him
makes him establish more vivid and
telling contact with his students. But |
there are men in Washington at |
this very moment who are little |
homesick for the university where
they are nourished at once by their
living interest in their specialities |
and by the refreshing Imagination
of their students.
The professor may look and be
brisker, brighter. and more contem.
porary In his interests. But II he Is
. competent professor he will be so