A Letter to Major Reglein

Abstract

Y OUR article, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, published in the October, 1943, issue of the JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION, creates the impression that you are speaking gratuitously for the millions of returning veterans whom, apparently, you have not consulted, and criticizing glibly our institutions of higher learning which, apparently, you regard as passe'. You express the hope that our young soldier-students will become sufficiently stimulated during their brief stay on the campus to want to return to college after they are mustered out. When, however, you inquire, How will the colleges and universities meet this situation? you resort to a series of questions which are distinguished by their name-calling: Timeworn curriculums, rigid subject-matter requirements, threadbare programs of outside activities, fusty system, dryas-dust dronings, erudite bleatings, and the like. Let us examine briefly some of the terms you use: timeworn curriculums- Will the timeworn curriculums . . . continue and prevail ? you ask, and thereby assert that such curriculums exist in number and imnortance sufficient to constitute a serious indictment of higher education. You impute a certain degree of antiquity to our curriculums and imply that such antiquity per se serves no useful purpose in modern higher education. As a military man, you have had to work your way to your position as a leader. Have you achieved your leadership by disregarding the history of war strategy? Have you not studied closely Greek and Roman and Hun strategy? What sections of the history of war would you label as timeworn and therefore to be set aside? Since you have made the indictment, it is only fair to ask you now to be specific: Will you name a representative number of such curriculums? Tell us what and where they are. Be sure that you distinguish carefully between those that are timeworn and those that are time-tested. Senseless, rigid, subject-matter requirements- Will the . . . senseless, rigid, subject-matter requirements . . .continue and prevail? You are an Army man. You would not tell us professors that the subject-matter you teach your trainees is not rigid and required? You know, of course, that the Army is a stern master of rigid, and subject-matter, and requirement. Perhaps it is the word senseless that