Word: gimmick
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Professor Henry Grattan Doyle of George Washington University thought it was time to call a halt. The latest gimmick among U.S. educators was something called "life-adjustment education" -a school of thought which seemed to believe that the teacher's job was not so much to teach history or algebra, as to prepare students to live happily ever after. "It will pass," said Professor Doyle to the Modern Language Association last week; but meanwhile, "it is continuing the same course of wild claims, blanket condemnation of 'traditional' subjects, anti-intellectualism, and contempt for 'book learning...
...gimmick in the five cent beer is the small glass that surrounds it. The publicity conscious barkeep in New York now in the national spotlight is supposed to use a six-ounce stein for his nickel brew. Local pourers suspect his heads foam unusually high. Another tavern on 96th Street sells ten cent beer in nine-ounce glasses, and five cent helpings in four-ounce steins. The profit here still goes to the clever samaritan who paid for the television set over your head...
...sure how they manage to learn a new song; for awhile the Pudding barroom is pandemonium as members peek out their parts on an antique piano, cursing the over-enthusiastic arranger. Once the music is memorized, however, the rest is easy. Any Krok who has an idea or a gimmick speaks up, and the idea is tried. If the rest of the Kroks like it, it stays; if not, it is thrown out. In this way the final interpretation represents the combined efforts of every member...
Over 1500 Harvard and Radcliffe students are still waiting. At the most, only a handful will get any profits from the current fad and most of these winners will be the organizers of their own pyramids. The whole setup of the clubs makes it impossible for the gimmick to last long. There just aren't enough people in the world to keep it rolling...
...Says Designer Bel Geddes: "I thought that overscaled gimmick at the entrance to the Pump Room was a statue of Ernie Byfield by Noguchi...