ADVENTURE IN GIVING

Here's a sound, sober, duly self-congratulatory testimonial to the now defunct General Education Board, a Rockefeller foundation, the first of its kind to explore and develop the systematic use of scholarships and extend the boundaries of secondary schools and universities without regard to race, creed or sex, both commonplaces today but 60 years ago a revolutionary program indeed. The tale as unfolded by the late Henry Pringle, his wife, and Raymond Fosdick, is large, learned, academically anecdotal; Wallace Buttrick, Bob Ogden, Abe Flexner are some of the guiding lights; Eliot of Harvard, Angell of Yale, a few trustee luminaries. The GEB fought poverty (Knapp men and farm demonstration aids), indifference and prejudice (the whole shabby spectrum of Southern segregation from white trash to ""nigger"" hand); it surveyed all rural and urban needs, called teachers' salaries a disgrace, revitalized medical institutions, sponsored controversial projects (Lincoln School, Oriental School). With money, sense and vision, they re-shaped the entire American socio-cultural pattern.