Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 44 text:

who preserve their infantile grace by studying English litera- ture because a small segment of the English language is their native tongue, French because a French governess shared in bringing them up, or Fine Arts or Music because with a little will-power it is possible to listen to records or look at slides without being forced into the painful processes of feeling or thinking. But such ellin beings are rare in postwar Harvard. By far the larger number of students in the humanities are so because they are eager to share in a tradition and to tap a vein of spiritual resource which are more needed than ever in days of hysteria, blindness, greed, and doubt. Men who want to think their way to freedom and peace as individuals and as members of society, often turn to music, art, or literature, and pursue the study of them with a seriousness and a passion which are the measures of their need and the proofs of the enduring value of the arts, both as means of understanding and as keys to a genuinely emancipated existence. An Anecdote for Laziness Such men are the bane of lazy teachers. They ask too many awkward questions, they will not be fobbed off with cliches, and they reject pedantic fact-finding or the amiable retailing of anecdote as substitutes for sound critical or his- torical study of the arts. In short, they insist on knowing, feeling, and thinking, the prime virtues of the humanistic scholar and, indeed, of the civilized citizen of the world, whatever his age, special tastes, or goal. But for the teacher who can conquer his laziness, postwar Harvard students are FRAN CIS MAG OUN U , PERRY MILLER Prof, uf Compurntlvc Lxtcruturn Professor of Amcricnn lritcruturc ARTHUR TILLMAN MERRITT ANDRE MORIZE Professor uf hrlrmic Professor of French Literature 4'fii , . ,...,, . U .f',:j.,., 524' v-1 :fra ' its: agile .1 'Ml . ,W William Sperry, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Dean of the Divinity School, has charge of Memorial Church. LEONARD OPDYCKE Associate l'rofc-ssor oi lfinc Arts FREDERICK PACKARIP, JR. ARTHUR PEASE I JOHN JOSEPH PENNY ROBERT PFEIFFER CHANDLER POST Assoc. Prufcssor of Public Speaking Pope I rofcssur ofthe Lntm Senior Pri-ccptnr m ROIIHIIIPO Lecturer on Semitic Lumzuagcs Boardman Professor nf Finn Arts LUUEUUZC and L 'f'mlUf0 LIIHZUI-HECS Curator of the Semitic Museum fl44l

Page 43 text:

Noted for his detailed knowledge of medieval church design, Professor Kenneth Conant also teaches a course in the history of American architecture. The realization and the recognition are the goals of the proper study of the humanities. That study alone will not serve the turn, but it is no more absurd to hold that a scholar in an ivory tower full of books, paintings, and music, needs nothing else, than it is to suppose that someone to whom all these things are quite unfamiliar can ever understand himself or other men. The humanities are still the best source of intimate comprehension of the basic qualities and values by which men and women live. However indispensable it is for the humane student to know enough of social institutions, governmental forms, and ways of dealing with the physical environment, it is no less indispensable to see that in the last analysis the institution, the form, and the utility of the ma- terial conquest, depend upon the moral and intellectual quality of men and women. To understand what is in the deepest sense morally and intellectually good and bad is the task and privilege of the student of the humanities. To evade the lure Of appearance and come as close as may be to cardinal reality is his problem. The works of art he knows, the history he Arthur Pope retired as head of the Fogg Art Museum last year. Along with Professor Paul Sachs, he made Fogg the No. 1 training school for U. S. museum curators and directors. makes part of his experience, the imaginative insights he achieves, the myths he learns to recognize and to assess in their relation to wise living, are the foundations for his under- standing of life. The Proper Harvardian That all this is remembered at present-day Harvard, in spite of the temptations to forgetfulness imposed by the exigencies of both the war and the peace, is shown, so far as it can be statistically, by the fact that in 1946-47 English was the largest field of study in the Graduate School and that the total percentage of undergraduates concentrating in the humanities last year is nearly as high as in 1941-42, and in a few departments, higher. If statistics were all, this might be laid to the inertia of the proper Harvardian who is loyal to the traditional habits of his tribe. That there is more in it than this is, however, known to every teacher of the humanities who has observed the reactions of his students. There are, of course, still the Hoaters and the drifters, the Ugabardine swine as a Harvard wit once called them, the charming folk Kenneth Murdock heads the Committee on Ameri- can Civilization, a gradu- ate program designed to integrate the study of American culture. He is a critic of 17th Century Eng- lish and American litera- ture. nun:-... IXUS, -'IK , ii!-

Page 45 text:

EDWIN REISCHAUER Associate Prnfc-ssor of Fur Hustt-ril liuugumrus GUILLER MO RIVERA 1 Assoeiiilre l'rofussor of Spanish GEORGE SARTON PAUL JOSEPH SACHS , , . Prof. of thc llistory of ben-line Professor of Finn Arts, Ifhncritus constant sources of stimulation. Even when they make him painfully conscious of his shortcomings and the looseness or superficiality of his thinking, they encourage him tO melld his ways by reinforcing his confidence in the value of his task. Professor Werner Jaeger is a distinguished classicist, the world's authority on Aristotle. 'I4Sl FRANCIS ROGERS Assn:-inte Professor of Ronmmr' lruligilmu-s rind lritvrntiiri- JAKOB ROSENBERG BENJAMIN ROWLAND Professor of Fine Arts Assoeiuie Professor of Fine Arts i HENRY SHEFFER GEORGE WILEY SHERBURN Professor of Philosophy 1'rofi-ssor of English JEAN-JOSEPH SEZNEC Sniitrh Professor nf the Frvneh iuitl Spanish Lnngimizvs The Need for Humane Teaching Indeed, one of the partial compensations for the tragedy of the war seems sure to be an improvement in the understanding and teaching of the humanities. Men with new problems, new backgrounds of experience, and new aspira- tions, will not long be put off with old methods and stale platitudes. If every age must rewrite history and think out its own critical interpretations, this is doubly true in a time in which so much of life and love and loyalty, sacrifice, suffering, and death has been crowded into a few years, and in a time in which the problems of survival for even a half-way decent human society are so bitterly acute as now. Mere shifts in mechanical devices of pedagogy are not enough. Whether television, the radio, the phonograph record, the movie, the conference, or the lecture, are used is not the question. What matters now for the teacher of the humanities, and for the student, is whether the teaching is itself humane, solidly grounded on the principle that just as the material is alive because it is important for living, so its presentation in the classroom must be alive because it is the product of minds in a free, sympathetic, and lively relation. The postwar student has already proved his need for such teaching and his right to it, the obligation of every Harvard teacher of the humanities is to prove his awareness of the need and the right andto devote his full energy to meeting the responsibility they put upon him. One way of meeting the challenge has been the estab- lishment of the courses in General Education. Gemfrrzl Edu-