Life, 1918-04-11 · page 15 of 44
Life — April 11, 1918 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon:** Titled "UNDINK / BUT NO DANGER IF THEY PULL TOGETHER," the sketch shows four rowers in a boat being pulled backward by a mermaid-like figure. The visual joke uses water imagery to suggest drunkenness ("undink" appears to be a play on drinking), while the caption reassures that teamwork prevents disaster. **The Article:** "Education for Success" critiques Harvard's "detective system" of general education, arguing that Harvard suppresses critical details about this approach. The piece defends specialized education against calls for "general culture," claiming specialists—though narrow—remain essential to society. It dismisses psychology as pseudo-scientific, mocking psychologists' claims about human behavior. The page satirizes both academic pretension and educational philosophy circa early 1900s.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
si XUM Education for Success HE. newspapers reported (March zoth) that Prof. Holt, Harvard psychologist, had said that eight out of ten Harvard graduates are failures; that the Harvard elective system is asinine, and that— it is foolish to talk of gencral culture where only specialists suc- eced. The cry of the business world in an is for unified men, men who sleep, cat and talk business; men whose whole education has been built upon that fundamental boyish inclination which denotes the real nature of the man, In unity alone is there success, and until Harvard realizes that her pur- pose is to make successful men, she is a failure. “ETF E : UNDINE NO DANGER IF THEY P 1. TOGETHER The Harvard Illustrated reported these remarks, and, the papers say, the Harvard authorities suppressed so much of the paper as contained them. But why? Who could put the case against general culture worse than it is put above? Who could picture a more disenchanting and repulsive Frankenstein monster than the unified man, who sleeps, eats and talks busi- ness? When a man has attended so thoroughly to his own case and theory as Prof. Holt seems to have done, it seems a pity to meddle. Possibly, however, the Harvard au- thorities lean somewhat towards spe- cialized education, and were loath to have the case for it put so ill as Prof. Holt scems to have put it. There is much to be said for it for average boys. For a good many boys it is good. To find a boy's bent and train him in ac- cordance with it is very good sense; only, if you catch a boy who is really worth educating, you want, if you can, to make a whole man of him, and not a narrowed-down specialist. To be a spe- cialist is the easiest way to be “suc- cessful.” But specialists, though they are ever so useful in this world, will never manage it. The managers will be completer men, who have thought more deeply about more things. The funniest thing about psychology is its effect on psychologists. They put the spirit under a microscope, and — presto! —it is gone, and they are tak- ing notes on attributes of the body. comicbooks.com