"No Publicity "

" No Publicity "

Mr. Broun as Schoolman's Champion--Gems and the Desert Air Mr. Heywood Broun of Harvard and The New York World has made a discovery in the field of education. More than that, he has devoted a good half--perhaps the good half--of his sprightly Column to its exposition. But unfortunately there is little comfort for the publishers of educational news in this happy event, for Mr. Broun's discovery is the fact that there is no such news. He has read the newspapers, including the sporting pages, assiduously and he knows "not a thing about the character and personality of a single educator in this city."

That, says Mr. Broun, is quite too bad. School affairs are not frivolous. It is as important, he implies, to train the young idea in the first place as to shoot it later. And there ought to be more noise about the whole business. He recalls somebody's visit to Copenhagen and his unidentified surprise at seeing a parade of school children behind a brass band and surrounded by a shouting populace, and all to celebrate the graduation of a high school class. It does not appear, however, that Mr. Broun's in- formant understood Danish--or the meaning of the shouts.

We gather that Mr. Broun chiefly complains of the lack of any publicity as to the educators themselves. He has no respect for curricula, but he admires teaching personality. He once knew a teacher himself. " And since the personality of the various men in the teaching force of the city is in the long run rather more important than the personality of the Mayor, the Comptroller or any of the Aldermen, we wonder just what philosophy of news has conferred anonymity upon them quite so completely."

Probably no philosophy of news but the nature and quality of news itself. No fair-minded person would agree with Sczornic's dictum that " all teachers are intransitives," but any one who has considered the facts would admit at once that very few teachers ever find themselves in situations which display those aspects of their personalities having headline value. The personality of a teacher may be, and usually is, of the first importance to his pupils. But his pupils do not buy the newspapers.

The grain of sense which, as so often, makes Mr. Broun's animadversions worth repeating, is the fact that the teaching profession, and particularly that part of it engaged in public school teaching, needs to be assured of the respect in which it is held by the community. Newspaper comment bears witness to one of the elements of respect--interest. It may well be doubted whether the metropolitan papers will ever devote to teachers the amount of space they devote to the Mayor, to say nothing of Pola Negri and Battling Siki. But they might very properly be more sensitive to important work in the schools than they now are. And they might well give credit by name where credit by name is due.

Students from the universities of Belgium, Czecho-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Holland, Norway, Poland, Rumania, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and England were officially present at the Confederation Internationale des Etudiants held recently at the Hague. Students from Hungary, Ireland and Latvia also attended, as did Russian Emigre students. The question of German participation was referred to the various national unions. The C. I. E. was formed in Strasbourg in 1919 "for conference about matters of educational and social interest and joint action for the furtherance of their common aims." All religious and political questions are barred. The Confederation is now convened to work out practical methods of cooperation. A C. I. E. magazine in French with official sections in French and English is to be printed and a three weeks' summer camp in Belgium has been projected.

Brown is to have a bronze bear at a cost of $10,000. Already $5,000 has been raised under the slogan: " A bronze bruno for Brown." The statue is being modeled from an exceptionally intelligent beast in the New York Zoo. Yale is threatened with a similar totem of the dog. Princeton is to have a live tiger. But Harvard has never really taken to the donkey. She prefers John Harvard, a square-toed young Puritan of a species which has no living representatives for photography or sculpture.

The radio has awe-inspiring educational possibilities. An instructor in the Haaren High School delivered his lecture from the Waldorf-Astoria, and ended with a test question to which he unfortunately broadcast the wrong answer. To make it worse, the Superintendent of Schools was listening in at 500 Park Avenue.