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Amateur Pedagogy Brought to Earth.

Communication

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest, but assume no responsibility for sentiments expressed under this head.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

With firm confidence in the ultimate mercy of that Providence which regulates all things transient and trivial in the minds of men, I enter the lists of the educational combat as an humble suppliant, who only desires to know why these things be.

That Mr. Tucker and Mr. Lazarus and Mr. Joslyn should find in this period of warm weather and hour examinations either the energy or the time to settle the educational destinies of the nation in a column and a half is a thing of marvel; but that the editors of the CRIMSON should find in this day of war economy the paper on which to print their effusions is a thing that passes understanding.

Does anybody know what it is all about? Does anybody care? If I were to approach Mr. Lazarus, or Mr. Joslyn, or last but not least Mr. Tucker, and say to them: here is Harvard University, a poor sort of institution at best, but just now utterly ruined by the lamentable uncertainty as to the educational program which it is to adopt for the future; take it; take it as a gift, and do with it what you will, so long as you write no longer--would they then leap to the opportunity and reorganize us all, or would they become strangely silent, thinking much and saying nothing more?

It is with the deepest regret that I bring these gentlemen down out of the clouds of pedagogical debate, and ask them, in the grand old words of the great Icelandic poet, Skjalmar Sverson: What are you going to do about it? It is with malice toward no one of them, and full charity for all of them that I classify them as utterly irrelevant to all collegiate affairs, entirely incompetent to face the problems they discuss in any practical way, and wholly immaterial to the progress of the universe. WILLIAM L. PROSSER '18.

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