Mount Holyoke College - Llamarada Yearbook (South Hadley, MA)

Page 22 text:

1 think of myself as trying to teach kno e» much as experience, not technique so much ' “Pa i,y. not habit so much as attitude: an auction and a respect for praiseworthy language, the ability '° c' X and to say. We work at these capacities through a miraculously rich body of literature which of course is a body Of knowledge. But literature is dynamic. « changes with history and accumulated experience, an it is new again any time a new reader picks it up So what matters most is the kind of reader who can com- plete. m the moment of his reading, the dynamic Pro- the endlessly recurrent dialogue between genius and sympathy. Reading and writing are unmistakably a humanity, by definition of that term. All «he Ivclds of study must make themselves humanities, or else we arc all in deep, perhaps fatal, trouble. Teachers of whatever discipline must avoid the temptation to vague ‘philosophizing, to loose and self-indulgent moralizing. But we also need to remember. I think, that our function is not to in- duce to knowing and efficiency but to discrimination and humanity. My own approach to literature may be UK) ethical in emphasis; I often think so. 1 get impa- tient with the complacency ami sclf-gratulalion that creeps into art and artists. Sometimes I think there is UK) much ‘art: Like any other line of study or en- deavor, it is good insofar as it serves the race, and not Ben L. Reid The image of an Ivory Tower for life a Mount Holyoke College is not only de ccptivc. it is deceitful. An apprenticeship in any academic discipline cannot hclj making our contemporary world riche and more meaningful. The student ii “Parties and Politics has no advantage over the student in “Renaissance Po- etry. The one learns the nature of he world by immersing herself in the pre- sent; the other, by an understanding its relation to the past. Fortunately no on: need confine herself to only one perspec- tive. 'Ilie very essence of an education in the liberal arts is the variety of perspec- tive available to all: to understand ti t- molecular structure of matter and the importance of prosody to a full reading of a poem is to understand the relation of the part to the whole, to perceive the basic shapes that order and meaning take in our time. Marjorie Kaufnuv

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F reedom, as I see it. is a mixture of opportunity and discipline. I regard opportu- nity as a panorama from which one may choose to focus upon a special segment. Hut discipline can become meaningful only if the segment of focus constantly pushes outward again toward panorama. In this way discipline can provide a source for opportunity as much as can opportunity for discipline. l-rccdom seems to me to be a mode of thought. It can be exercised in any environment. Although environment may condition the scope of opportunity, it cannot kill all opportunity. Vision, ingenuity, and perseverance arc the ingredients for achieving freedom under any conditions. Colleges would seem to me more likely than most other environments to tolerate freedom. Mount Holyoke is no exception. And, although we may hope that any college will strive to improve, there is no reason why we should expect it to achieve perfection. Lack of improvement, however, will stem only front lack of vision, ingenuity and perseverance on the part of the college community directed toward upholding a clear concept of the nature of freedom and practicing freedom. There is no substi- tute for individual responsibility in this regard. I lay no blame outside myself for any freedom I do not possess. David Holden

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Speech, which under another name, rhetoric, is one of the oldest and most eminent of the academic disci- plines. is regarded in many quarters today with a vague opprobium. One need not seek far to tind the reasons. There is the notion that speech is rather more a product of specific skill than it is an intellectual dis- cipline concerned with a unique area of knowledge. But the fact that a grounding in skills may be involved in a given discipline docs not vr se disqualify it from a place in the liberal arts curriculum; the important question concerns the ends which the specific skills arc designed to serve. It scents to me a far more significant factor making for unease about speech is a wide-spread dislike—echoing Plato in a sense—of the rhetorician, a basic distrust of I eloquence itself. This distrust of eloquence is a curi- ously modern prejudice, which is very probably the result of this century's tragic experiences with the demagogue as leader or m.tlcadcr, perhaps coupled with the conviction that instruction in the arts of ora- tory is necessarily amoral, concerned primarily, at least, with expertise about techniques rather than the truth of any given discourse. Unfortunately, however, we can not protect ourselves against the misuse of eloquence by avoiding its sys- tematic analysis; ignorance about eloquence exposes us to its irresponsible uses, and what is worse, leaves us disarmed in a most important struggle, leaves us un- able effectively to combat error or advance truth. Sam Wellbaum Music integrates many fields of knowledge, demanding their constant pursuit both in breadth and depth. In its involvement with sound waves, overtones, reso- nance. music is involved with physics. In its constant concern with the ear, with the control of fingers and arms, with the coordination of respiration and phona- tion. music is applied physiology. In the translation into sound of the symbols on the printed page, in the communication of ideas, in its relation to imagination and emotion, music enters the realm of psychology. Performance in relation to group activity and audience awareness recognizes sociology. Aesthetics ushers mu- sic into the orbit of philosophy. Languages, history, literature are indispensable for its comprehension. In fact, the enormous scope of music would be forbidding were it not for the rewards of enjoyment it gives to the individual and the values it contributes to society. At Mount Holyoke a student can learn the basic prin- ciples of the structure of music and its analysis. She can develop standards of taste and discrimination, steep herself in the great heritage of musical literature, and. by consciously integrating these elements with her other courses, find enrichment for her entire post-col- lege life, which will in turn enrich her home and com- munity. And in this perhaps the ultimate goal of edu- cation? Ruth Douglass Ns 19