Word: leaven
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Dates: during 1910-1919
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...studies such as sociology, political economy, will be sought by these boys who have been in touch with the realities of life. Those officers who have been lucky enough to escape destruction with serious gravity bitten into their character, when they return to their studies will act as a leaven among the new undergraduate bodies...
Governor Coolidge is perhaps gifted with far greater foresight than his opponents will allow him when he says that in reconstructing education the classics must not be forgotten. "After all," he says, "idealism is the only practical thing." It is in humanizing, in leavening human society, then, that we can overcome those forces which, shooting up from the soil of a "reckless" materialism, work adversely to the finer and nobler aspirations of human society. If we are to choose between leaven and dynamite in reconstructing civilization, by all means let it be the former...
...ready-made opinions for the mere reason that they were ready-made, to hold a little aloof from current lanes of thought. Such a spirit, only too rare in our land of gigantic uniformities, and almost non-existent in our colleges, gave one hope that here at least a leaven was working which would ultimately transform American thought from the flabby courageless thing it is into something new and liberating...
There is a liberal leaven of light editorials dominating those with a more grave tone, the range of subjects sweeping from vendettas to evangelists. Mr. Davis' somewhat scholarly article on "The Study of Contemporary Literature in College" is an intelligent and comprehensive treatment...
That is why a greater leaven of radicalism in college teaching is desirable. The question whether a certain group of ideas be inculcated or not is of slight importance compared to the need of arousing real intellectual turmoil. A great many staid conservative students wander unsuspectingly into Economics A, and are startled to learn that protectionism is not a doctrine of certified divine origin. It worries them for a time to find that the universe of thought is not entirely plotted into straight, narrow, and exclusive paths; then they weather the crisis and return smugly to the old beliefs...