Augsburg College - Augsburgian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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ADMINISTRATION BUSINESS OFFICE “What cat killed curiosity?” President of Augsburg College. Oscar Anderson. Am I mistaken, or is this college generation really curious about ideas, history, the material world, human behavior, art. political theory, economic reality, ethics, religion? If going to college becomes a bore and a chore to many, it may be because the mere desire to know is dead, every subject is a drag - something lifeless, you might say. which the cat dragged in. The sense of wonder is basic to learning and when it is not there, the delightful aha moment of discovery is seldom experienced. Abraham Maslow has pointed out that curiosity can and does die from disuse. What cat killed curiosity? Was it a merit system of grades, with its class standings, test scores and G.P.A.'s which precluded any spontaneous love affair with the new and the exciting? Was it a regimen of requirements which became hoops through which one jumped to become learned? Was it a teaching methodology which constructed by-passes in the mind by academic procedures conducted under anethesia? Was it an educational system so preoccupied with playing parent or treating everybody the same or avoiding the hard work of developing the thrist for knowledge, that by the end of high school the lure of learning was non-existent? The mystery, of course, will not be solved by finding one culprit because everyone on the scene is guilty. We are all part of a society which puts little or no value on learning for learning's sake. Knowledge has been quantified, pragmatized, fragmented and made relevant.” to the point where just finding out about something is deemed useless and a waste of time. What good will it do me? How will this help me get a job? Why spend time and money on something I will never need? These are the questions of appetites so jaded and thrists so quenched with trivia. T.V.. titilations, that the quest for truth and beauty and goodness becomes incomprehensible. The greatest challenge to a liberal arts college may not be to construct a curriculum, but somehow to restore curiosity. Anatole France once wrote. The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. I confess to wondering why many of the most curious people I have known, and thus the most educated. never went to college at all. -Oscar Anderson