Advertisement

The Learned Lumber Jack

COMMENT

By the unanimous decision of university authorities a lumber jack forty-two years of age--an engineering student in the University of Washington whose education until a year ago was confined to the seventh grade of an Irish grammar school--was termed one of the twenty-five most brilliant minds in the United States. This honor was conferred upon him as a result of making a perfect score in the army "alpha" intelligence test. He required only thirteen of the seventeen minutes allowed to complete the test, a feat which was une ualed by any of the 3,000,000 service men who took this examination during the war period. Some of the words whose meaning he had to give to answer the questions are, pomology, cleistogamous, chamfer and guimpe.

It is almost safe to say that the average college student could not give the meaning of more than one of the four words above listed. It is perfectly safe to say that during this man's first year at the university he did not acquire all of the knowledge necessary to make a perfect score on such an examination. He succeeded in coming out ahead of the three million other contestants because he made the best of the opportunities at hand though he had not the opportunity to attend college.

Such an accomplishment ought to teach this much at least: that the world judges the extent that we are educated by what we know, and not by what we have studied; and while the university is the ideal medium through which an education may be secured, it is not the only one, and we can continue our training to good advantage after we have left our alma mater. Michigan Daily.

Advertisement
Advertisement