From the Academy

The Achievement of Dr. Hobbs

The Fund for the Republic is spending a great deal of money in an endeavor to discover Fear among teachers. Men seldom fail to discover what they seek, if they have sufficient money to spend in the pursuit; and a representative of that Fund recently remarked in my presence that the Fund knew that teachers were terrorized, and was now proceeding to document its assumption. Well, I should be astonished if the Fund were unable to find any fear among teachers. For teaching is a fearful occupation, in more senses than one. A sardonic friend of mine and I once walked along the streets of a neat college-town, observing the swaggering progressively-educated children of the professors and, the Milquetoast manners of their fathers. “This,” said my friend, “is a city of brave children and timid men.” Few men know better than does Mr. Robert Hutchins, head of the Fund for the Republic, just how timorous professors and teachers are: for he has bullied and browbeaten the species for some decades, with conspicuous success. Certainly, some people at the University of Chicago quaked at the name of Robert M. Hutchins.

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Russell Kirk

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The Achievement of Dr. Hobbs

The Fund for the Republic is spending a great deal of money in an endeavor to discover Fear among teachers. Men seldom fail to discover what they seek, if they have sufficient money to spend in the pursuit; and a representative of that Fund recently remarked in my presence that the Fund knew that teachers were terrorized, and was now proceeding to document its assumption. Well, I should be astonished if the Fund were unable to find any fear among teachers. For teaching is a fearful occupation, in more senses than one. A sardonic friend of mine and I once walked along the streets of a neat college-town, observing the swaggering progressively-educated children of the professors and, the Milquetoast manners of their fathers. “This,” said my friend, “is a city of brave children and timid men.” Few men know better than does Mr. Robert Hutchins, head of the Fund for the Republic, just how timorous professors and teachers are: for he has bullied and browbeaten the species for some decades, with conspicuous success. Certainly, some people at the University of Chicago quaked at the name of Robert M. Hutchins.