Word: fetishizing
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Public opinion should be awakened at once to the fact that the practical politician class, that is, those who consider every public interest with reference to the personal interest, now hold but a small balance of power, however fiercely they may appeal to the fetish of their obsolescent party creeds; that now is the opportunity to discuss real issues, and that now public opinion may do, if it will, the one thing most needed by demanding for the leadership of the nation knowledge proved by experience, coupled with powers educated and strengthened in successful achievement...
...reason is not far to seek. We have been getting our opera through foreign media--we have been subsidizing alien directors, conductors, and a thousand others to give us our music. They know their business, from their own viewpoint, at least. They know that once the fetish of opera sung in an uncomprehensible language is destroyed, their day is over...
...that degree as one of the passports to a teaching position. Some college presidents virtually insist that they will appoint no one as instructor who has not been tagged with this title. Others will appoint undoctored instructors, but will not promote them. The thing has almost become a fetish. Yet even a fetish, when it actually exists, must be tolerated if we want to put Harvard men on the teaching staffs of colleges and professional schools. Our facilities enable us to train teachers of business subjects and our standards are high enough to warrant giving this degree if there...
...minimum. A minimum requirement can never be really high nor act as an incentive to exertion for men of superior capacity; and it is not impossible that by constantly harping upon the minimum we have actually lessened the desire for excellence. We are tending in America to make a fetish of degrees. Moreover, in conferring the degree itself we are in danger of relying too much on mechanical rating. The ordinary student is too apt to treat courses as Cook's tourists do the starred pictures in foreign galleries, as experiences to be checked off and forgotten...
...teachings. His commandments deal primarily with man's conduct both toward God and toward man. Christ has given to the world examples of how these commandments should be fulfilled. His teachings are generally interpreted too literally. Too often men treat his words as a kind of charm or fetish instead of getting at their real meaning...