Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/322

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
298
THE PLASTIC AGE

The administration seems afraid of a man that can teach. They Ve made Buchanan a full professor, and there is n’t a man in college who can tell what he’s talking about. He’s written a couple of books that nobody reads, and that makes him a scholar. I was forced to take three courses with him. They were agony, and he never taught me a damn thing.”

“Most of them don’t teach you a damn thing,” Winsor exclaimed, tapping his pipe on the mantel. “They either tell you something that you can find more easily in a book, or just confuse you with a lot of ponderous lectures that put you to sleep or drive you crazy if you try to understand them.” j

“There are just about a dozen men in this col¬ lege worth listening to,” Hugh put in, “and I’ve got three of them this term. I’m learning more than I did in my whole three first years. Let’s be fair, though. We ’re blaming it all on the profs, and you know damn well that we don’t study. All we try to do is to get by—I don’t mean you Phi Betes; I mean all the rest of us—and if we can put anything over on the profs we are tickled pink. We ’re like a lot of little kids in grammar-school. Just look at the cheating that goes on, the copying of themes, and the cribbing. It’s rotten!”

Winsor started to protest, but Hugh rushed on. “Oh, I know that the majority of the fellows don’t consciously cheat; I’m talking about the copying of