Report Card

P: New York's State Education Department announced plans for a five-point program to speed the development of gifted high-school students, especially in scientific fields. The new program, scheduled to go into effect next fall, will provide facilities for advanced work in physics, chemistry, mathematics and English courses, and will encourage closer cooperation between industrial concerns and the schools' science departments.

P: The Du Pont Co. upped its annual aid to education grant by more than $100,000 announced that for 1956-57 it will hand out $900,000 to more than 100 colleges and universities. All of the increase and nearly half of the entire grant will go toward the improvement of teaching, especially of science and mathematics, in colleges and high schools.

P: Dean F. T. Wall, of the University of Illinois graduate college, blasted industry for creating "educational inflation" by demanding unnecessary Ph.D.s for its employees. Dean Wall argued that the pressure for advanced degrees may devaluate the Ph.D. to the point where a "super degree" will be needed to stand in the relation to the Ph.D. that the Doctor of Philosophy was originally intended to bear to the bachelor's degree.

P: The Harvard Law School Library added to its collection of rare legal documents a copy of the earliest known imprint of laws enacted in New England, dated 1643. The broadside, bought from Lincoln Cathedral in England for $12,000, is one of two known to exist; the other known copy is at the British Museum. The "Capitall Lawes" list 15 offenses punishable by death, citing the Old Testament as authority rather than the common law of England.

P: Retired University of California teachers took out incorporation papers for a National Committee on the Emeriti to boost the pensions of the nation's 11,000 retired college teachers and endow post-retirement professorships. The group reported that a median pension for retired professors is currently $179 a month, and that many get $100 a month or less. The Emeriti Committee will seek support from the large foundations.

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