In Russia

The Russian school system received attention at Williamstown. At a round table conference directed by B. A. Bakhmetev, former Russian Ambassador to the U. S., Sir Paul Vinogradov, Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Russian Duma before the Revolution and now professor of jurisprudence at Oxford, declared that the whole system has been disorganized, that the Bolsheviki are engaged in making " robots " of the people, and that the exile of the intelligentia makes educational reconstruction difficult. Sixteen thousand members of this class have been deported, according to Sir Paul. The result is that it will be necessary first to build schools, and second to organize and train teachers. The middle class from which teachers would ordinarily come has been destroyed and the only ready supply of men and women fit to teach is a scattering of deported intellectuals in Europe and the U. S. These men and women, said Sir Paul, are waiting to return. As things now are education in the peoples' university is corrupt " because the authorities make truth subsequent to class distinctions."

At the same conference John Spargo, former Socialist leader, urged Sir Paul to tell "the terrible truth" about education in Soviet Russia wherever he went in the U. S. in order to counteract "propaganda" issued by The New Republic and The Nation to the effect that the Soviets have been " marvelously successful " in their educational policies.

Italy, France, Germany

Mussolini believes that he made his way from a village workman to Prime Minister by years of intensive study of history and philosophy. The result of that belief is a return to classicism in Italy. Children of eleven study Latin in the public schools. Character, intellectual ability and artistic taste, rather than what is believed to be the American ideal of power to make money, are the objectives. Ancient Greece and Rome are the means.

The Minister of Education of the French Government has recently issued a project for a new educational policy which follows the same lines--a return to the classics for the training of character.

For obvious reasons Germany is on the opposite tack. Classicism was never anything but a series of intellectual exercises in Germany. And Germany is too doubtful of the future to rely upon the past. The official departments (under the Constitution, the Reich has the power to make school laws for the states along general lines) plan the study of one foreign and one classical language and the preparation of children to face the practical problems of life in present-day Germany.

Paulsen Schools

It is not in the official departments that the trend of German education is to be observed. The most significant present movement is that in the private schools originated by a Dr. Paulsen in Hamburg. In spite of the law prohibiting private schools for the first four years of a child's education, these schools have persisted. They were first established after the War to train children for freedom, in order that they might be prepared for the completely democratic state. Now that the completely democratic state has been cancelled, the schools remain to educate children for freedom because no one knows what else to train them for. If they were taught communism, some reactionary legislature might come along and repeal everything they knew. If they were taught republicanism, a Soviet committee might antiquate their education with a new enactment. So they are taught to be themselves, upon the theory that they will thus be safe from amendment, recodification, excision and repeal.

Freedom in these schools means freedom to do as one pleases. Beginners start at six with a specified teacher. As they grow older they choose their own teachers. There are no regular classes, but the children spend five or six hours a day at school talking and moving about as they wish and working at anything that interests them. The function of the teachers is to answer questions and teach what they are asked to teach. In time they are asked to teach whatever is necessary and the children make extraordinary progress in learning. But learning is a mere by-product of these schools, for no one knows what a German schoolboy ought to learn. The real product is freedom and fully developed individuality.

"Most Exceptional"

A Hindu mathematical genius named Somesh Chandra Bose, with headquarters in Bengal, astounded what the papers describe as " gray-bearded professors of the Columbia mathematics department" by multiplying, taking square and cube roots and finding reciprocals without the aid of pen, pencil, chalk or stilus, and all as rapidly as the combined mathematics faculty, assisted by an adding machine and large quantities of writing materials. Mr. Bose attributes his success to natural ability (at the age of eight he could multiply a 14-digit number by another of equal length all in his head), a happy marriage, permitting 100% concentration on mathematics, and an ascetic life (three glasses of milk a day with none on Mondays). The provost of Teachers College officially announced after the test that the work of Mr. Bose was "most exceptional."

Harvard '86, Yale '98

Last week TIME pointed out that Calvin Coolidge, Herbert L. Pratt, Dwight W. Morrow were graduated from Amherst in the class of 1895, and that Woodrow Wilson, Mahlon Pitney, Cyrus H. McCormick, Robert Bridges, Cleveland H. Dodge were graduated from Princeton in the class of 1879.

"Harvard '86 " wrote stating that no mention of famous classes can overlook the one which graduated Philosopher George Santayana, Biographer Gamaliel Bradford, and Ambassador (to Germany) Allison B. Houghton--the class which might have graduated Publisher W. R. Hearst.*

Another communication called attention to Yale 1898 as being the " youngest " famous class. It includes James W. Wadsworth (U. S. Senator from New York), Hiram Bingham (Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut), Henry H. Curran (U. S. Commissioner of Immigration), Julian S. Mason (Managing Editor of the New York Tribune), Gouverneur Morris (novelist), Worthington Scranton and Paym Whitney (capitalists), Brewer Edd (divine).

No communications have as yet been received from west of the Alleghanies.

*In this connection it is recalled that many a man of fame, besides Mr. Hearst, has abandoned Harvard before reaching a B.A. ; for example, Douglas Fairbanks. Also Heywood Broun (famed colyumist of The New York World) and his chief, Herbert Bayard Swope (Executive Editor).