Education: No Half-Baked Drill

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"Don't waste time on half-baked military drill," the headmasters of some 30 famed Eastern schools (among them: St. Paul's, Taft, Horace Mann, Loomis) were told when they met at Pawling School in the Berkshire foothills to ponder the role of "Private Schools in This Emergency." They called in an Army and a Navy man, who flatly affirmed that the best service they can render the nation is to give their boys better training in fundamentals.

The Navy has had to turn down hundreds of candidates for commissions because of deficiencies in math, said Lieut. Commander Burton Davis, urging the preparatory schools to make every boy take at least two and a half years of math, including algebra, plane and solid geometry, trigonometry.

Last week the conferees, accepting the Army and Navy suggestions, sent to private schools throughout the land recommendations for a wartime curriculum including more training in mathematics, geography, modern history, radio and telephone, electricity, internal-combustion engines, map making, etc. They also recommended more manual labor (like road building and farming) and less varsity athletics, substituting tough intramural sports for everybody.