Prelude to Learning

The janitors and scrub-ladies of the educational world last week cleaned floors and windows, dusted desks in high, stale-smelling rooms. Keen was the anticipation of many a college-town merchant. For soon the student army began to appear-some in new, curious, heterogeneous clothing, consciously striving to seem at ease; others older, bigger, surer. To pop-eyed newcomers, college presidents and school heads droned speeches about "intellectual curiosity." "the academic heritage," "The Future." It was the beginning of another School Year.

P: Unaccompanied by the U. S. Secret Service Allan Henry Hoover, the Presi dent's younger son went to Harvard's Business School, where Herbert Clark Hoover Jr. had gone before him.* After reading a telegram from his father, which forbade him to speak for the "talkies," Allan Hoover allowed himself to be press-photographed, went about his Business.

P: President Ernest Martin Hopkins had a stern welcome prepared for Dartmouth freshmen. Said he, in the convocation ad dress: "College officers are forced to hold due reservation and to remain only mildly impressed by eloquent contentions that colleges exist solely to satisfy the wishes of the undergraduates. . . . What seems best for mankind as a whole cannot be forgotten or ignored in college management for the specious satisfaction of con forming to an ephemeral undergraduate opinion or the desires of self-centered individuals."

P: HERE'S TO DEAR OLD YALE, TEAR HER DOWN, TEAR HER DOWN was the caption once run under a drawing by one Robert Osborne in the Yale Record (funny monthly). The pic ture showed a grotesque jumble of destruction out of which soared tangled fingers of new structural steel. Further tearing down of Old Yale was announced at New Haven last week. Two dormitories will be erected across the street from Harkness Quadrangle; also, more buildings for the Law School, and a medical and pediatric laboratory. The cost: some $4,350,000. . . This year Yale will have a perfect freshman, one Eugene V. Rostrow who made a mark of 100% in all his entrance examinations.

P: Two years ago at the University of Wisconsin Prof. Alexander Meiklejohn, one-time Amherst President, began an "experimental" college. His freshmen were to study only Periclean culture, his sophomores U. S. history, sociology. From the experimental college they were to enter the University's junior class (TIME, June 18. Sept. 10, 1928). This year the first batch of experiments will be thrown in with the general run of undergraduates. President Glenn Frank, Dr. Meiklejohn's great & good friend, who sponsored the experimental college, will soon have proof of his pet pedagogical pudding. . . .

P: Few Princeton men do not know John Gale Hun, who conducts in Princeton a school for young children, another school for "cramming" college entrance candi dates, and a third for "cramming" under graduates. So aware of Hun aid was one Princetonian, according to legend, that, upon graduating, he asked Crammer Hun to sign his name under those of the Uni versity Trustees and President. Legend adds Crammer Hun signed. This week another Hun enterprise was inaugurated: a country day school for students from Trenton, N. J., and vicinity. . . . Time-honored though the custom be, this year, for the first time, Princeton public school children will get no holiday when it rains. . . . Among the Cyr.us Fogg Brackett lecturers this year at Princeton University will be Fred Wesley Sargent, president of Chicago & North Western Railway; Jesse Isidor Straus, president of R. H. Macy & Co. (Manhattan department store) ; Paul Shoup; president of Southern Pacific Rail way; Newcomb Carlton. president of Western Union Telegraph Co.

P: At Lawrenceville School (N. J.) a new infirmary was dedicated last week. Cost : some $225,000. Chief campaigner: Charles Gates Dawes.

P: At Chicago University, the president's house was not in commission. So Presi dent Robert Maynard Hutchins, 30, obtained from Yale last June, to be inducted in November, is living temporarily as the house guest of Harold Higgins Swift, potent meat packer and Chicago Trustee. A studio for Mrs. Hutchins, who sculps, was improvised over the Swift garage. Max Epstein, chairman of General American Tank Car Corp., who donated and for whom was named the Epstein Dispensary, has given some $1,000,000 for an art center. For teachers and pictures the university must look elsewhere.

P: From Yale, to succeed Dean John Henry Wigmore of Northwestern University's law school, went Prof. Leon Green. . . . The baby of Northwestern's entering class was one Harold M. Finley, 13, of McConnellsville, Ohio.

P: At his Historical Village at Dearborn, Mich., last week, Henry Ford and his son and grandsons witnessed the reopening of the school in which Henry Ford studied in 1870. Sitting once more beside Edsel Alexander Ruddiman, his oldtime desk-mate, who is now a learned chemist, Mr. Ford carved his initials on a desktop unreproved by Teacher. Although Mr. Ford is currently engaged in celebrating the Golden Jubilee of the electric light bulb, pupils at the old school will, for sentiment's sake, have to read by the light of oil lamps, be warmed by a wood stove, "just like Henry Ford."

P: To Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) in 1925 came President James Lukens McConaughy. He saw haw quietly the brownstone poker-faces of College Row peered down through the trees to High Street. Wesleyan then seemed the perfect, immutable embodiment of the smalltown college of song and story. President McConaughy, wanting to make a name for Wesleyan and for himself, began innovating. He has introduced and publicized new practices. From the pulpit of the chapel last year, for example, spoke Walter Hampden, actor, and Norman Mattoon Thomas, Socialist candidate for President. Last week more innovations came to Wesleyan. Freshmen are to set down the names of from one to five fraternities they would like to visit. Fraternities likewise are to indicate new men they wish to have visit them. Later, an elections clearing house will be established: as nearly as possible fraternities and candi dates will be pleased.

* While at Amherst, John Coolidge was followed from dormitory to chapel to classroom to meals to bed by U. S. Agent Col. Edward W. Starling.