Barnard College - Mortarboard Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 15 text:

Prospice The events of the last few months have resulted in a re-evaluation of our current curriculum design. Greater stress on technological courses, probably operating to reduce emphasis on the liberal arts and the humanities can be expected. There are two points of interest here: one concerns the need for more scientific training; the other pertains to the effect of this increase in scientific training on other areas of education. Our present facilities for educating scientific personnel are inadequate for the needs of a super-sonic age. To correct this shortcoming, the government has announced an increase in its own scientific research programs, and it is likely that many universities, as well as industry, will follow its example by offering additional scholarships, fellowships and research grants for people interested in the physical sciences. We can not argue that this concern with accelerating our technology is exaggerated, but we can wonder about its effect on the social sciences and the arts. Scientific advancement is not sufficient to ensure a strong defensive or offensive position in a world beset with political and economical unrest. We can not afford to permit research and development programs in the social sciences to lag; we certainl y should not, for example, emphasize nuclear physics at the expense of social research in underdeveloped geographic areas, any more than we should allow scientific research itself to slacken. It is at this point that the universities have a great responsibility. They must allow neither their curricula nor their faculties to become overly oriented toward the technological sciences. Care must be taken to prevent the non-technological faculties from being viewed as drones— entertaining but inutile. Science must not develop a monopoly on intelligence. 13