Life, 1911-05-25 · page 7 of 42
Life — May 25, 1911 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page critiques the expansion of American colleges in the early 20th century. The text argues that while colleges are proliferating, children are learning in four years what previously took longer, questioning whether increased college numbers genuinely improves education quality. The satirical cartoon at top depicts "LIFE" as a literal institution with various activities—suggesting colleges mirror real life rather than transcending it. The illustration below, captioned "FARMER BROWN GAVE HIS FIVE BOYS A COLLEGE EDUCATION," appears darkly ironic. It shows rural children at play/work rather than in formal academic settings, mocking the gap between promised "college education" and actual rural educational reality—suggesting that merely naming something education doesn't make it so.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Colleges and Education HOSE of us who feel that our educational system is not a success should remember that our children are now learning in four years what it has taken us forty to acquire; and if we doubt this statement we have only to ask them and they will corroborate it. There are, of course, certain misguided folk who assert that the standard of our educational system is lowered in proportion to the increased number of colleges, but that, doubtless, is because they envy this age its advantages over the age in which they were brought up. Every respectable hamlet now has a college and some sort of a millionaire to philanthropize it. It may be a long way from rebates to restitution, but every magnate arrives there at last and it then becomes his main business to increase the number of colleges. And this is the time of ycar when colleges pour out upon a waiting world that vast flood of wisdom represented in college graduates, incidentally keeping up the supply of basc- ball players and hotel waiters, to say nothing of Wall Strect has-beens and haberdashers’ clerks. Then consider, if you will, the yearly crop of girl college graduates. What is going to happen to them? Or does it make any difference to a girl's capacity to love and be loved, whether or not she is steeped for four years in Latin, Greek and the higher mathematics? We don't know. This number of Lire contains no informa- tion about that matter, or indeed about anything else. It is merely a pictorial and textual expression of joy over the graduation of so many preponderating intellects and the hope that they will make the cld world better and wiser by their presence. PARMER BROWN GAVE HIS FIVE BOYS A COLLEGE EDUCATION comicbooks.com