Word: flexner
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...very fitting manner, to the attention of all. The senior of their number, now seventeen, has just been elected to Phi-Beta Kappa, with a truly prodigious grade average and amid appropriate eclat. Northwestern seems to feel that this vindicates the essential wisdom of her experiment, and even Dr. Flexner declares that he is reminded of his old dream of a prodigy high school in New York...
...article in the Times announces the publication of Abraham Flexner's "The University in a Changing World" and quotes several starting denunciations of American colleges which Mr. Flexner makes no attempt to qualify. The writer asserts that American university students, though two years older than their European contemporaries, know less and their cultural interests are so limited as to be accidental. Mr. Flexner further asks when will university presidents coase to be noise personages and be proud to remain academic aides...
Just what Mr. Flexner means by an American student knowing less than a European is difficult to understand. If he means that Europeans have a greater knowledge of classical languages and literatures, he is very probably right, since in most cases, the classics form the basis of modern European methods of education. This influence of the classics, moreover, does broaden the "cultural interests to some extent. But in the matters of practical knowledge and general accumulation of facts the American student is easily the equal, if not the superior, of his European contemporary. The varied and diversified program demanded...
Assuming these accusations are true, Mr. Flexner has evidently not paused to consider why so many European students come to American colleges each year. They must know Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, or Southern California to be "inferior in solidity to the secondary schools of England and the Continent," yet still they come, and object violently if refused admission. Not long ago an English schoolmaster declared the present English youth to be dishonest, lazy, and irresponsible. It is only a short step from such a general remark to Mr. Flexner's broad assertions concerning American students. Broadly aimed flank attacks...
Another light of learning already with Dr. Flexner's Institute is Professor Oswald Veblen, Princeton's mathematician. Mathematics is a brace for holding apparently unconnected phenomena together. For ordinary purposes three prongs of that brace suffice-length, breadth, height. But for profound science more grips on reality are needed-a variable time, for example And not only many grips are needed, but flexibility in their operation. The mathematical machine, most solid of the sciences, is constantly acquiring new links and kinks. One of its cleverest engineers is Professor Oswald Veblen...