Letters

Grand Old Man

To THE EDITOR: There are, I imagine, a very great many alumni who follow the news letters of William D. Parkinson for the Class of 1878. They are compounded of courage, humor and conviction. They are heartening and heartwarming and do honor to great old age and Dartmouth as well. The time will come when those class notes will cease and then kind things will be said and spread upon the pages of this MAGAZINE by some of those who have appreciated and enjoyed them. I would like to pay my tribute now to such a brave old man, who, unknowingly, has given me, and certainly many others, so much pleasure and something more.

Uniontown, Pa.

Judge Davis

To THE EDITOR: Permit me to correct a statement made by Stanley Jones '18 in the final installment of his interesting articles 011 bequests to the College. He wrote that Judge Henry K. Davis never went to the College save to lecture at Tuck School.

This generous benefactor of the College was a friend of Albert Phillipson '30, and during the latter's college years Judge Davis made frequent visits to Hanover. He became interested in the house-building struggles of the SAE chapter, and his enthusiasm led to several valuable gifts to the house library and to its building fund. After the house was completed, he was welcomed to its guest room whenever he came to Hanover.

During one of these visits he told me of his great interest in the story of Thadcieus Stevens, and of his desire to set up a fund for student aid in memory of this famous Dartmouth man. The untimely death of Judge Davis brought the bequest to the College shortly thereafter. Its total is $49,142.91 rather than the smaller figure given in the article.

Judge Davis was Referee in Bankruptcy in the courts of New York City. At his suggestion I introduced him to the Tuck School faculty and arranged for his talk on bankruptcy for their students, ft was his idea that, although bankruptcy is unfortunate, future business men should know about its legal procedure. The honorarium for this lecture became a part of the SAE building fund.

Hanover, N. H

In Sorrow

To THE EDITOR I am extremely pained that the ALUMNIMAGAZINE wastes scarce and valuable paper on anything as silly as the Vanishing Indians article.

The pictogiaph is worse than the article, as it implies that both "college fathers" and "less educated fathers" are distinct species which breed true to l)pe. This disregards the obvious fact that many college fathers do not send their sons to college, and that many college men have "less educated" fathers.

The pessimistic last paragraph, wailing because "college fathers are falling quite short of replacing themselves" is simply wasting words.

The Roman Catholic clergy doesn't replace itself, either! Didn't the writer ever hear of Alma Mater?

It's the college that breeds college men, not the college fathers. Today, our colleges are filled to overflowing.

I would like to inquire if this Population Reference Bureau of Washington, D. C., is supported by taxpayers. I have read lots of stuff from Washington bureaus. How to KillBedbugs, from the bureau of Agriculture; How to Pin on Diapers, from the Bureau of Child Welfare: and The Mythical Origin ofthe White Buffalo Dance in the Original FoxIndian Dialect, from the bureau of American Ethnology.

I'll bet something nice that the Pop. Ref Bureau replaces itself copiously.

Yours in sorrow,

Northport, N. Y.

The Dartmouth Replies

To THE EDITOR: I suspect that Thomas W. Braden's colorfulbit of editorializing in the April issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE needs a little clarification.Whether it was intended as an impartial andcritical approach to a controversial topic Ido not know: in any event, what he has written is a one-sided attack that strips The Dartmouth's Survey of Courses of any value whatsoever.

For one of his most dextrous bits of sophistry we must go no farther than the second sentence. By a s'eight of hand that would do honor to a professional magician, he renders "student poll" into "popularity poll" and then sets off on an interesting if questionable exposition on the latter's value. Actually, TheDartmouth's questionnaire was precise—if anything, over-precise—in its search for specific evidence of an instructor's worth. Queries were not directed at a professor's personality but at methods of presentation, at value derived by the student, and so on. If Mr. Braden had followed the newspaper he edited seven years ago a little more closely, he would have found that several of the more "popular" professors got unfavorable reviews.

Mr. Biaden's statement that students cannot validly estimate their courses is even more questionable, and his analogy with popular approval of soap opera is inane. Granted, Scattergood Baine's popular appeal does not indicate artistic merit, but neither has the popular appeal itself. Hooper ratings calculate entertainment value, and if art is anywhere concerned, so are, to borrow one of Mr. Braden's expressions, false teeth.

Granted, again, that a class' estimate of a teacher is not the final judgment of his worth; neither is Mr. Braden"s estimate, nor a general faculty estimate, nor an alumni estimate. The value of a professor nuisi be determined by every individual and by every group that experiences his teaching. If the student body is not equipped to olfer an opinion, I know of 110 group that can. Above all, and to many this has all along been obvious: The Dartmouth's Survey of Courses is a poll of student opinion. It has never posed as anything more. Its other purpose is to serve as a guide to courses and instructors for future years. Again, we have not posed as a directory of all that is right and all that is wrong; rather, we are presenting a signpost indicating certain specific values and certain specific failings in the Dartmouth curriculum. That these do not agree with Mr. Braden's ideas on the Dartmouth curriculum is hardly fit basis for disregarding them.

His criticism of the survey questionnaire itself is a humorous conglomeration. "A question such as 'Are the lectures well organized' tends to favor the academic plodder who passes out ideas distilled from notebooks." By itself, such a question would have precisely that effect. But there are other questions, regarding the instructor's enthusiasm, his originality, his interest. Many are the members of the faculty who have been criticized in The Dartmouth in recent weeks for "plodding." And, incidentally, is organization of lectures to be frowned upon? Must great ideas be judged by their chaos of construction? Are not most theories great because of their clarity, simplicity and logic? And are not these the elements of organization?

Mr. Braden's last point comes the closest to the truth. It is true, the survey has hurt some professorial feelings. We suspect it was, inevitable. But we also suspect that if one case of temporary injury could improve teaching standards at Dartmouth for the thousands of students who are now passing through and who will pass through in the future, it is well worth it. That we expected the College to crucify instructors who are treated severely is manifestly absurd, despite Mr. Braden's "evidence", to the contrary. We were aware, before we started, that the official Administration would probably ignore it, and were told so by a high Administration officer in no uncertain terms.

Mr. Braden's last comment leaves us nonplussed. He claims a survey should be based on the systems already tried at Purdue, Michigan and Washington. It was precisely these universities, along with California and Harvard, that served as models for The Dartmouth's survey. We suggest that Mr. Braden do some of the research that occupied us for over a month before we started the survey. He may discover that at California it was found that submitting signed surveys to the Dean's office for evaluation, as he suggested, was the best way not to get student participation.

Hanover, N. H.

Editor, The Dartmouth

EDITOR'S NOTE: We must confess to being secretly pleased over having The Dartmouth 011 the receiving end of ail editorial and finding them just as touchy as anyone else. We have read Mr. Braden's editorial again, and his main points seem to be these: that The Dartmouth's course survey is not sound educational criticism because it is too largely a popularity poll; that well-intentioned and thorough as it was, it made a mistake in trying to measure all Dartmouth teaching against a set pattern; and, lastly, that student criticism is a valid part of improving education at Dartmouth but that such criticism ought to be related to the student critic and ought not to be anonymous. These points have made sense to some of our readers; we suspect that their appeal increases as one gets beyond the undergraduate point of view.