Not So Useless

Dorothy thompson, news commentator, who incidentally holds an honorary L.H.D. from Dartmouth, writes in the most recent issue of the Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa) in praise of so-miscalled "useless" learning; i.e., the sort of learning characteristic of the liberal arts colleges, which is generally lumped under the general name of the "humanities" and decried by some because it is not of direct use in fitting a student to be a specialist in something or other. Miss Thompson feels that it isn't right to refer to such learning as "useless" on that account. In fact she insists that it is about the most useful of all kinds of learning, in that out of liberal arts training came the American theory of life and government.

It has taken the shock of war to bring people to a realization of the importance of non-specializing curricula, although one might have expected quite the reverse to be the case. At all events defenders of the liberal education seem to have taken heart, in the face of times which try men's souls, and their ranks have been recruited by the addition of many who, previously, had in- clined to underrate cultural training as compared with technical training. There is something in this world besides special- ized skills; something greater and more comprehensive, which those specialized skills exist to serve.

A specialist has been defined as"one who studies more and more about less and less." It would be misleading to define a student of the liberal arts as one who studies less and less about more and more, but at least he is not narrowing his field or concentrating on a single line of thought. If he does not perceptibly make the world go round, it might be claimed that he makes the worth-while world for which men are willing to fight and if need be die. The "useless" learning is not so useless after all.