Big Omission

Dr. Beaglehole apologises for not having said much about "courses of study, 'stages,' options, syllabuses, set books and text-books." Well, I for one would not like to have seen anything omitted from his 320 pages but I cannot help but feel that the most important things to cover in the history of a University are what is taught, why it is taught, and how it is taught. It would have been most instructive, for example, to trace how Victoria College arrived at the position where its students can solemnly hold Shelley to bo mad and Milton bad, to prove by figures that the tenth child is not as bright as the first one and that the luckless lad who is bom in Te Aro flat is not so intelligent as the one nourished on Kelburn Parade. Moreover, how has it come about that the defenders of a Lysenko can be pursued with the vindictiveness with which once the Bench of Bishops assailed Darwin and the inquisition, Galileo? The discovery in Salamanca Road fifty years after his death that there had once been a man named Karl Marx and the desperate attempt to explain him—or rather explain him away—should also furnish rich material for the historian of ideas.