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LEWIS INSTITUTE |
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By Agness Joslyn Kaufman |
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| On the memorable morning that the
Director and the Dean came up Madison street actually to open the doors of
the Institute, two little boys were sitting on the curb-stone waiting for
the great event. Both of them are now well known in the educational world;
one of them, the mathematical wonder George Birkhoff, was said by many to
have been the greatest mathematician in the world at the time of this
death. I should not be so rash as to say that the actual training George
received during his high school and college years at Lewis made him what
he was, but he always insisted that the encouragement he received there to
step out of the beaten paths and to develop his own mathematical ideas
started him on his way. The Institute, in those days, instead of offering formal examinations to new students, held an "opening week", a classification period such as we know today. I have never heard of the plan being used before it was tried out here, but it may have been in existence elsewhere. The problem of the individual was always strongly stressed, for the Institute began by establishing an "elective" system in the high school years in the hope of developing self expression. The three "R’s" and the classical background were emphasized, but the student had a chance to choose a few subjects to complete his program and was delighted with his liberty, while the die-hards in the city schools shook their heads in horror at the departure from the cut and dried formulas of the day. Many years later, at a banquet of honor given to Director Carman, much was said as to the time and thought he had given to the development of the individual, and the original Dean of the Institute, Professor Edwin H. Lewis, whose writings were generally so profound that only a few could understand them, penned these line "To Our Chief": Carman likes to make a man, and now you’ll agree He did his level best to make a man of you and me. Carman likes ’em different, and, too, we’ll all agree I ain’t no copy of you, my dear, you ain’t no copy of me. For one by one he studied us, he studied you and me, And always he respected individuality. A great expert in persons and a maker of them, too - That’s what the dear old boy has been to all he ever knew. |
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| Page last updated on May 17, 2000. |
