Those who heard Dr. Charles A. Prosser's lecture on "Secondary Education and Life" last night will be forced to reconsider what they mean by "education." "Nothing could be more certain," he said, "than that science has proven false the doctrine of general education and its fundamental theory that memory or imagination or the reason or the will can be trained as a power." What Dr. Prosser would substitute is "specific education" for the secondary schools, and under this vocationalism he would add to the curriculum such subjects as practice in the use of English as "a tool of communication," business English, current events in economics, wholesome recreation in the community, social amenities and manners and the use of leisure time.

Dr. Prosser's speech was as frank and complete a statement of the vocational view of education as could be found, but a gloomy picture of the future of democracy is painted by his sturdy, scientific facing of the facts. His realism frankly admits that the mass of humanity cannot be decorated much, and in meeting the problem of unemployable youth he would at least make them skillful drones during the incubation period. "Now, and not at some indefinite time to come, education should be integrated with life and kept integrated for all time to come," Dr. Prosser stated. But it is a matter of taste and not of logic whether or not one accepts his leveling integration and decides that vocational training is better than traditional discipline. The superior student would suffer; the average student might benefit.

Dr. Prosser rejects "cold-storage knowledge" in repulsive psychological terminology on the grounds that the student "loses all such indispensable assets for efficient learning and its retention as interest, motivated incentive, and adequate epperceptive basis for understanding what is taught, and adequate opportunity to apply, test, and fix it through participating experience." Hutchins is not needed to point out that giving the student what he wants can be carried too far. Dr. Prosser, with his deadly scientific bias, has a mortal fear of what he calls "preachment," which he lumps together with "untried theories and mere factual learning" as the evils of traditional education. One can hope that his sterile, moral, practical youth never becomes an overwhelming reality.