Education: First Aid to Marriage

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Some of the things that matter most to U. S. citizens—religion, politics, love, marriage, birth—are pretty largely ignored by U. S. formal education. Until 15 years ago no U. S. college had anything to tell its students about marriage. Today some 200 have.

The man who started the first college course in marriage was ruddy little Ernest Rutherford Groves, 60, University of North Carolina's famed sociologist. He has been married twice (his first wife died ), has four children. To tell others how to find happiness in marriage he has written 28 books (six of them with his second wife).

Last week Dr. Groves gathered together in Chapel Hill, N. C. 125 educators, ministers, doctors and lawyers from 1 8 States for a conference on Conservation of Marriage and the Family. Rev. Edgar Schmiedeler, of the National Catholic Welfare Council, said marriage was a divine institution not to be profaned by human meddling. But other delegates declared that colleges and even high schools must give young people "scientific preparation for marriage and parenthood."

Said Colgate University's Sociologist Norman E. Himes: "Though birth control is now accepted in principle by the majority of the American people . . . our 400 clinics reach only a small proportion of the population. . . . Present reproductive trends point to a possible decline in the intelligence of the American people. . . . America urgently needs a biological plan. . . ."