Word: idea
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...been for the pressure of the Plan E Committee upon the court, the proposal would probably have been postponed for two years. The circumvention of the legal intricacies which Cambridge politicians raised to defeat the petition was worth the effort, for the idea of a city manager has many real advantages, unrealized by most American communities. Essentially it means the elimination of graft and political favoritism from metropolitan government. It provides for the appointment by the Council of a paid administrator; he runs the city, prepares the budget, appoints subordinates according to civil service laws, while the mayor loses...
...vocational schools, nonetheless compulsory, irrelated courses were dull and valueless. The point at issue seems much rather to be: precisely what, if any, educational program exists today of Harvard The solution to the mystery of departmental fluctuations is the tragic, but simple one, that nobody has any clear idea of the purpose of an intellectual institution. Courses are chosen--in some cases, even fields--on the basis of relative difficulty, the hour and place of meeting or the whim of an assertive room-mate. There is an arrogant confusion everywhere as to the meaning and value of attending college...
...literary characters in the past decade have given the American public greater enjoyment (and a more distorted idea of the United Kingdom) than Bertie Wooster, and in Mr. Wodehouse's latest opus, his wealthy, good-natured, irresponsible hero returns, funnier than ever but with a new glint in the Wooster...
...Hutchins of Chicago University, this institution is launching a compulsory curriculum based on the "Hundred Great Books" which, according to its authorities, are the foundation of all our knowledge and culture. It is, roughly, a chronological study of the arts and sciences of the ages, conforming to its supporters' idea of what is the basis for a modern education, and raging temporally from Homer's Iliad to Freud's Principles of Hysteria. There is no latitude of choice, each student being compelled to study four languages, Latin, Greek, French and German, besides the required sciences, mathematics, music, and theology, considered...
...chapter called "Tools and the Man," Dr. Lowell shows himself a member of the old school of thought, which believes strongly in mental discipline for its own sake. He favors the study of classics in secondary school as excellent mind training and self-education, and rather approves of the idea that the subject should contain more drudgery than interest. At a later time in discussing the minds of students, Dr. Lowell says they do not object to strict discipline in itself, particularly if they are responsible for the result. But he does not take into consideration the fact that...