Pullman Cars

COLLEGE presidents have the doubtful pleasure of being frequently interviewed on the most various subjects; they have the greatest freedom of utterance in public; and yet there is one topic that they are inclined to avoid, one subject which they either handle with gloves or not at all. Perhaps, like Shelley and the love of which he sang, they feel that scholarship is too often profaned for them to profane it; they take refuge in their official reports, which they know very few will ever read, and express the desire of their hearts and the deepest professional wisdom in pages whose only destiny is to be buried in archives. And yet a few presidents have spoken out to the public on the central problems of education. Such phrases as the ‘three-ring circus’ and the ‘country club’ helped to make Mr. Wilson famous; and now President Hyde has said that we must furnish ‘Pullman cars’ to our better students, so that they may be separated from mediocrity and may travel to learning in a class by themselves. Here indeed is reaction in high places, and courage too. For his words are redolent with special privilege, and it is likely that the Students’ Protective Association will soon issue a memorial demanding equal rights and equal rewards for all, reasserting the SixteenHours-a-Week Law and reminding President Hyde that all American citizens are created free and equal.

Now it would be a joke if the students should make such a protest, and yet it would be highly serious; for it is the general American belief that all students should have the same training and the same teachers. We have confounded political equality, which is possible, with intellectual equality, which is impossible. Almost all of us have taken for granted that the old utilitarian ideal of the greatest good to the greatest number would solve any difficulty. The result has been that our colleges are wide open. Any one can get into them, and very few, after entrance, fail to get out of them duly adorned with a degree. For us, it has been a comforting spectacle, and we have been confirmed in our satisfaction by foreign savants who congratulate us profusely on our national passion for education and go home without regret to universities whose degrees mean something.

But the minority to which President Hyde belongs is growing: the important minority who believe in the inequality of the students, so far as intelligence is concerned; who have realized that our democracy depends not merely on the general average but also on our ability to foster and produce the best. If that is aristocracy, we need aristocracy; if that means Honor Schools, let us have Honor Schools. But above all, let us encourage our college presidents to unburden themselves on educational questions. We assure them that there is an eager public who appreciate slang when uttered in a good cause, and who will tolerate even weighty argument, if directed against the intellectual apathy and slackness of our colleges.

For it is absurd that the good, the bad, and the indifferent should all take the same courses, hear the same professors, and receive the same degrees; a business firm which gave the same tasks to all its employees would soon be in bankruptcy. Our reluctance to admit any difference of ability between one man and another is so profound that we have come near to killing distinction. The trouble with the ‘Pullman car’ phrase is that it suggests luxury, ease of motion, and porters, whereas what our best students really need is hard work, the stimulus of competition, and the total absence of ‘porters.’ For porters have altogether too nearly the same function as the ordinary professor; they both examine their passengers at frequent intervals and are very careful to remove from them all signs of the long and dusty journey. If some metaphor is necessary, perhaps one drawn from the aristocracy of athletics would do. We wish President Hyde would found a training table.