Late Starter

At Harrow, red-headed young Winston Churchill was last boy in the "third fourth" (the lowest division of the lowest form) for three times as long as any boy in the school. It took him three tries to nudge his way into Sandhurst. At 24, an Army lieutenant, he applied for Oxford, gave up when the examiner demanded a schoolboy's Greek irregular verbs from a British regular officer.

An older, wiser Churchill, in the scarlet robe of an (honorary) Oxford Doctor of Civil Laws, last week added two more honorary degrees to his now considerable string. The newest: a Doctor of Laws from the University of Miami, another from Westminster College. In Miami, Dr. Churchill plucked some ripe thoughts about education. Said he:

"I am surprised that in my later life I should have become so good in taking degrees because, when a schoolboy, I was so bad at passing examinations. In fact, one might almost say that no one ever passed so few examinations and received so many degrees. From this a superficial thinker might argue that the way to get the most degrees is to fail in the most examinations." But there was a more "edifying conclusion" to be drawn.

"I am going to put in a plea for the late starters. . . . The university education may be even better appreciated by those in the early twenties than by those in the late teens." Churchill urged veterans, whose educations were "slashed across by [war's] flaming sword," to put his theory to "a practical and a supreme application."

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