Article June 21, 1958 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Harold R. Medina, Raymond H. Clark

Judge Harold R. Medina in an address at Rollins College reported in The Winter Park Sun Winter Park, Florida

The title of my address is "The Liberal Arts and Whole Man." ... I shall introduce my subject by collating a few key phrases from an article by Professor Caryl P. Haskins entitled "Science and the Whole Man." ... He speaks of "Mass standardization" as "dwarfing the individual;" he speaks of "the gifted, the free, the unstandardized individual" as one with "superior imagination, superior communicativeness and persuasion, superior judgment;" he speaks of "essential individuality" and "essential non-conformity," and the critical importance in these trying times of Americans who are "independent" and "original."

But how is one to become free and independent, original and creative, with "superior imagination, superior communicativeness and persuasion, superior judgment"? Surely this is a Herculean task in the midst of the demands for conformity which are becoming more and more insistent in the period of crisis and rapid social change and adjustment through which we are now passing. The human race is gregarious by instinct, and the majority, especially those in authority, always seem determined to make the rest conform to their notions of what is proper and fitting, down to the last detail. ...

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