Simple inability to raise or even borrow the money is a major bar to the study of medicine in the U.S., reported the Association of American Medical Colleges last week. Spending an average of $10,000, medical students pay about twice as much for their training as other graduate students. Yet two out of three nonmedical graduate students get an average $2,000 a year in outside help, compared with $500 for one out of two M.D. students. Unlike the prospective Ph.D., "who characteristically makes his living by going to school," the medical student or his family pays four-fifths of the cost of his education. Only 8% comes from scholarships and loans. About 21% comes from outside jobs that steal time from studies.
To take the pressure off medical students and attract better ones, the association urgently recommended a five-year aid plan costing $86 million, to be raised by states and private sources. Last week New York's $114 million Commonwealth Fund, long active in medical research, announced that it will switch much of its giving to medical education.
School for Spirit
"The place reeks of tent pegs and clean living," scoffs one critic about Scotland's famed Gordonstoun School. Founder Kurt Hahn, 74, is often accused of "Germanizing" British education. But as they met last week in London, 900 Old Boys of Gordonstoun took pride in more than the presence of a famed alumnus, Prince Philip, or the fact that Top People now clamor to get on the waiting list. Their real pride lay in the resolute character that they feel Gordonstoun gave them.
German-born Schoolmaster Kurt Hahn thought out his concept of a school while a student at Oxford's Magdalen College, where he watched tame deer browsing .spiritlessly in the park and saw an analogy with tame schoolboys. Turning to Plato's Republic for guidance, Hahn designed a stern academy to "molest" the overly contented. His "seven laws": 1) give children opportunities for selfdiscovery; 2) make them meet with triumph and defeat; 3) give them the opportunity for self-effacement in a common cause; 4) provide periods of silence; 5) train the imagination; 6) make games important but not predominant; 7) free the sons of the rich and powerful from the enervating sense of privilege.
In 1920 he put his laws to work in founding Germany's Salem School at Baden-Baden. Headmaster Hahn flourished until Hitler came to power and jailed him for loudly defying Naziism. Britain's Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald petitioned Germany's President Hindenburg, who freed Hahn to go to England. While Salem continued fitfully in other hands, Hahn started a new school at Gordonstoun on the bleakly beautiful Morayshire coast of Scotland.*