Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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majors. Both of these are significant departures from previous policy and indicate the influence the Study enjoys. What the principal task of the members of the Study will be is to determine the course the redirection of educational goals and purposes is to take. This depends very much on the characteristics and motivations of the students. The most difficult problem facing the Study is how to design a program in which the negativity of the students is counterbalanced by their natural idealism. It is very important that this negativity not be allowed to dominate, as in the case of the Berkeley riots. To avoid this, the student must be aided as much as possible in his personal search for a stable system of values. Without such values, he will react to the unpleasant or undesirable aspects of his environment in a negative way. Thus, it is important that the University aid and allow the student to develop his personality, his identity, and not try to force one upon him. In the context of educational structure, the best way to accomplish this end is to allow the student as much freedom as possible in the

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planning of his educational program. It is harmful in many cases to classify a person, for instance, a history major, or an electrical engineering major, and set upon him a great set of requirements. The freedom to set up one's own “major” program within certain limitations would allow the student a much greater opportunity to find his own pattern, his own self, and would relax much of the pressure to put people in definite and pre-conceived categories. Another way of accomplishing this goal of developing the student's identity and values is through the encouragement of student participation in social programs and organizations of the type of VISTA or the Peace Corps. Several such programs involving tutoring projects in poverty areas have been organized at Stanford in the past few years, but these are completely “extracurricular.” Increased student participation in such projects would result from official University recognition of 30