Report Card

P: Waspish Philosopher Mortimer (Great Books) Adler took another buzzing stab at the "babysitting" aspects of U.S. education. Currently, said Adler in a speech before a secondary-school educators' meeting of the National Catholic Educational Association in San Francisco, the schools do not prepare pupils to go on learning in their leisure time. Adler's recommendation: do away with all vocational training in lower schools and give every student a liberal-arts education up through the bachelor's-degree level.

P: Already the recipient of $1,750,000 from the Sealantic Fund (John D. Rockefeller Jr.) for its theology faculty, and $4,324,200 from the Ford Foundation's great gift to U.S. colleges (TIME, Dec. 26), the University of Chicago received an estimated $15 million plus from the will of the late Louis Block, Joliet (Ill.) industrialist (Blockson Chemical Co.). The bequest is to establish the "Louis Block fund for basic research and advanced study" in the physical and biological sciences.

P: The Associated Colleges of Claremont, Calif, added a fifth liberal arts college to the four already in operation in Claremont. The new one: Harvey Mudd College, named after Mining Engineer Harvey Seeley Mudd. The college will emphasize basic science and engineering.

P: Brown University received a Christmas windfall last week of 350 acres of Mount Hope, in Bristol, R.I., from Mrs. Rudolf F. Haffenreffer and her sons Rudolf III and Carl W. (Narragansett Brewing Co.). Included is a museum containing one of the nation's largest collections of American Indian antiquities in private hands.

P: In Thompsonville, Conn., the parents of Seventh Grader Shirley Richardson vowed to continue fighting to establish their right to decide what their daughter should wear to school. For the five weeks before Christmas vacation, Shirley was forced to sit in a classroom by herself, because Principal Ernest K. White disapproved of her corduroy slacks. When her parents argued that Shirley wore slacks because of a leg operation, White replied that he wanted to see a doctor's affidavit. The school board turned down an appeal from the Richardsons' attorney.

P: The Council for Financial Aid to Education announced that voluntary gifts and grants to the nation's colleges and universities had jumped to $507 million in the fiscal year 1954-55, as compared to an estimated $339 million in 1951-52. The new total, however, falls short by some $100 million of the annual amount the colleges will need in gifts for the next ten years.

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