While the Faculty Council at Harvard was announcing that the study of English grammar and composition will be made much more intensive as a requirement for freshman classes, Teachers College at Columbia burst into print yesterday with a story to the effect that a course in the "Technique of Fresh Water Angling" is to be added to the curriculum of that institution--which already has courses in poultry raising, baseball and piano tuning.

Here is a perfect example of the kind of thing that drives competent educational authorities toward nervous breakdowns. On the one hand, a basic reality of education is recognized as needing more attention, and that attention is given it. On the other, an institution purporting to train teachers acts on the assumption that the primary tasks of education have been conquered so effectively that the profession may now be indulged in recreational side issues.

Teachers College at Columbia is straying from its task. By the evidence of these recurrent Monday morning sensations, it is more interested in freak publicity than in sober common sense. Teaching is a profoundly important profession and faces a formidable task. The decision at Harvard strengthens it for the struggle. The action of Teachers College at Columbia breaches its defenses. -Boston Evening Globe.