Teacher Snubbed

At most U. S. colleges there exist two kinds of faculty members: the teaching professors and the research professors. Dear to the heart of the undergraduate is many a teaching professor. Him they afterward remember for what little light and learning they possess, and also for his eccentricities, for good fellowship. When they grow old they swap anecdotes about him; if they become Trustees they like to see him prosper in his fashion. But the research professors, who sometimes regard the civilizing of students as a vague, even faintly vulgar waste of time, are the darlings of their erudite colleagues and often of the president, who feels the responsibility of keeping the University in a good competitive position intellectually. Between the two groups occasionally there is mild academic friction. Last week at Yale there was strife.

Associate Professor Robert Dudley French of the English department is a teaching professor as well as a scholar. Graduated from Yale in 1910, he returned to teach in 1915. In 1920 he took over a Chaucer course, brushed up its fustiness, livened it, taught it well, increasing the enrolment from 30 to 300 in nine years.

When Dean Wilbur Lucius Cross of the Graduate School announced this fall that he would retire from the faculty at end of the year, a full professorship in the English department was left vacant. After 14 years of well-received teaching at Yale, popular Mr. French hoped that the fruits of his long labors might be rewarded. But another consideration arose last month. He was offered the Provostship of Avon Old Farms, a pretentious two-year-old experimental school at Avon, Conn.

If he was to get his professorship, Mr. French felt that he must decline the school's offer. He went to the English department, forthrightly asked if he was to receive the position. As forthrightly the English board met, voted unfavorably four to three. Their fancy fell upon Assistant Professor Frederick Albert Pottle of the Graduate School, a mighty young authority on Johnsoniana.

With tumult and with shouting Pedagog French's friends and disciples, old and new, came to his aid. The Corporation solemnly convened, voted to create an extra professorship for him, submitted the proposal to the English board. Again and astoundingly came the negative vote, four to three. President James Rowland Angell accepted Pedagog French's resignation, with customary expressions of regret. The triumph of Research over Teaching seemed complete.

Sixty-one indignant undergraduates published a signed manifesto in the Yale Daily News, crying: ''The withdrawal of Mr. French signifies, as well as an incalculable loss to the university, a demoralizing blow directed against those who stand out for the principles upon which he has based his work ... an irreparable injury to the principle of a 'finer, not a bigger Yale,' which we have been led to respect."

Simultaneously Dr. Henry Seidel Canby, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, Yale lecturer, promoter of Avon Old Farms, announced that, sorry as he was to see Pedagog French leave Yale, he was glad to get him at Avon. Said Dr. Canby: "In accepting the Provostship of Avon, he is not leaving the educational area in which good teaching and the sympathetic handling of youth are so important, but shifting his ground. . . ."

At Avon Pedagog French will find a unique educational experiment. Two years ago Mrs. Theodate Pope Riddle of Farmington founded the school, financed it, designed and built the buildings in the image of a Cotswold village.* The quadrangle of dormitories is surrounded by workshops, masters' houses, the dining hall, the bank, all roofed with thick red tile, theatrically pre-aged. Some 125 boys attend classes much the same as at any other preparatory school. They hunt, fish, ride on the 3,000-acre estate which slopes gently down to the Farmington Valley. There are no organized athletics.

First provost was Francis Mitchel Froelicher of Johns Hopkins, who retired last year because of ill health. Interested parents/- of Avon boys know that among the able teaching staff are Edward Pulling (history), famed oldtime Groton master, and James Appleton Thayer (classics), son of retiring Headmaster William Greenough ("Twill") Thayer of St. Marks (TIME, Dec. 2). Pedagog French's job will be to institute a junior college at Avon, gradually increase the enrolment to 400 boys fitted to enter universities in sophomore year.

* She was also the architect of smart Westover School for girls at Middlebury, Conn.

/- Famed Avon parents: Editor Henry Seidel Canby, onetime Governor & Mrs. Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania, Poet Archibald MacLeish, Streets in the Moon, The Hamlet of A. MacLeish. Nephews of Professor Robert Andrews Millikan and the late Ambassador Myron T. Herrick also attend the school.

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