Dartmouth Head Sees Vital Phase of Education, Impact of Youthful Minds on One Another, fostered by 300th Fund

It is not often that captions are as definitely descriptive as is the sub-head on the Harvard University Bulletin before me in regard to The Proposed "800th Anniversary Fund." The subhead reads, "To Strengthen the Life of the University and Increase the National Scope of Its Usefulness."

The Harvard Plan

In regard to the "Harvard National Scholarships, I believe it to be true as is stated, "that the older endowed universities and colleges in this country have a special duty to perform in offering their facilities to students from every part of the country." Beyond this, however, I believe that there is an advantage to the respective institutions which adopt this policy and carry it to fulfillment. Some one of the English writers has said that, granting the great desirability of tradition, plant, and distinction in processes of instruction, nevertheless the most vital phase of education is the impact of youthful mind on youthful mind. This is fundamental in my philosophy of higher education, and I believe that sectionalism and provincialism both are as undesirable as they are impossible in the modern world. For that reason I believe that a man who in his four years in an undergraduate college lives on terms of social intimacy and common understanding with men from all of the different parts of the country is far better educated and far better qualified to become a useful citizen than is the man educated in a group predominantly from a single area. Not only will it be a great advantage to the country to have Harvard's influence spread as it will be spread under the proposed plan, but it will likewise be of great advantage to Harvard itself.

University Professorships

In regard to the University Professorships, I have known of no such intelligent and realistic attempt to offset the evils of over-departmentalization and of high specialization as is represented by the proposal of this plan. For perfectly obvious and understandable reasons a college curriculum tends to fall into the hands of specialists working in water-tight compartments of knowledge and instinctively holding the bulkheads tightly closed that if opened would articulate one branch of knowledge with another. The inevitable result of this is failure on the part of institutions of higher education to make clear to undergraduates anything even mildly suggestive of the fact that there is a unity to all knowledge and that any isolated branch of knowledge. is of insignificant consequence by itself as contrasted with the importance which it has in relation to other branches of knowledge. The feet that the words "wholeness" and "holiness" spring from the same root is not without an implication to which far more importance could be attached advantageously than is attached in the modern college.

Conant's RecommendationsPresident Conant's recommendations are indicative of an imagination, of a perspicacity, and of a courage which will not only be highly advantageous to the great university of which he is the head, but which will be an inspiration to all of the historic cultural colleges of the country