Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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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-

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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

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Williztm Ernest Hocking, the Alford Professor of Natural Re- ligion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Emeritus, still delivers occasional lectures, was a member of the recent Commission on Freedom of the Press. mtirm in ll Free Soviely, the elaborate report of a special Uni- versity Committee appointed during the war, presented a pro- gram for general education at Harvard, which was approved in principle by the Faculty in October, 1945. The term, general education, said the report, does not mean some airy educa- L. F, SOLANO TAYLOR STARCK Asww. l'l'nf. uf lioln:tn1-i- i7H.llL'1ll1Il.ft'H l'l'Hf4'HSUl' of fil'l'HHlII WILLIAM THOMSON ROBERT ULICH .Iiewi-Ll, l'mfw':4oi' of .-Xrzthirr Prof:-sruir of l'i1lut::tl.iou Serge Elisseeff along with Edwin Reischauer and Historian john Fairbanks have made Harvard's Far Eastern department one of the nation's best. tion in knowledge in general Cif there be such knowledgejf' nor does it mean education for all in the sense of universal education. It is used to indicate that part of a student's whole education which looks first of all to life as a responsible human being and citizen. The committee in charge of the new program added: Among the elements which go to make up general education are the cultivation ofa sense of values, the development of clear thinking, and an understanding of the physical and social world in which we live. - The General Education Program In the fall of 1946 the program began with eight experimental courses, each limited in size and restricted to Freshmen and Sophomotes. The total enrollment was 479. In 1947-48 more courses were added, including some speci- fically designed for upper classmen. Limitations on enrollment were taken off and the number of students increased to 1720. The courses were given in three fields: Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and the Humanities. In each the emphasis was on the subject not as a field for specialization but as a kind of knowledge with a way of thinking that must be understood for successful living in the modern world. The Student Council issued a report based on the opinions of the students who took part in the first year's program. This showed an impressively favorable response, especially to the courses in the humanities. In one of these Homer, the Old Testament, Plato, Dante, Montaigne, and Shakespeare were read and discussed as sources of out common ideas and as great examples of ways of thinking and 1461