University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 17 text:

Dean Simpson sketches new college phiIOSOphy The object of the New College is simply to provide the best possible Liberal Education. If we confine ourseives to generalities, a Liberal Edu- cation can be easily enough defined. It is a matter of knowledge, skills, and standards Opinions about the knowledge which an educated man ought to possess have varied greatlyesome highly educated men would cheer- fully admit to a vast ignorance: but an argument could be made for the view that he ought to know a little about everything and a lot about something. There is less dis- agreement about the essential skills, which are the ca- pacity to think Clearly and to write and speak lucidly. And there is something like unanimity about the stand- ards. An educated man is a civilized being who has some notion of excellence and some feeling for the needs of his 0er times. The talented hour, or the creative recluse, is no exception to this statement: such people are either uneducated, or they have forgotten what a liberal education means. To this definition, we may add the observation that it takes most high school graduates four years to obtain admittance to Hthe society of educated men;l and that the BA. degree is the usual passport. When we descend from generalities t0 the opportu- nities offered by a particular institution, we plunge into a welter of hopes half realized, and of flavors determined by the folds in the local soil. An undergraduate educatiOn at Chicago has always been a liberal experience for those who could take ad- vantage of it. The traditions and resources of a great University can hardly fail to make some impression on an open, eager mind. But the institutional arrangements can either help or binder, and we would be less than honest if we did not admit that we have suffered from a system of divided control. On the one hand, there was a College dedicated to a demanding idea of General Education. On the other hand, there were departments offering elective and specialized courses. The division was such that there were often two streams of under- graduate life, one passing through the College and then departing elsewhere with a degree in General Education twhose value was often less apparent to others than it was to its ownerl, the second stream entering the de- partments with their eyes on a professional career. The undergraduate who tried to get the equivalent of a nor- mal BA. on our own campus often found it a frustrating experience. His two sets of teachers lived in different worlds and communication between them was far from easy. We have now reorganized ourselves. The Idea of Gen- eral Education, as expounded by the Old College, is cordially embraced by the New. General Education, rightly understood, is an indispensable part of Liberal Education. The program of the first two years in the New College, with its staff-taught courses. its imagina- tively planned readings, and its small discussion classes, preserves this tradition, and there is probably no college in the country where a better general education is ole felted, But the privilege of the student to induige his own whims among the elective courses. and his right to get down to his specialization without needless delay, is now safeguarded. If we have learned one thing from a noble experiment in a prescribed General Education, it is the necessity to defend the individual student against the excesses of the planners. Moreover we have ended the System Of divided con- trol. For the first time in our history we have a College with full jurisdiction over the whole four-year 8A., and its faculty is composed, in about equal proportions, of General Educationalists and Departmental Special- ists. May they mix freely and fruitfully! They have much to learn from each other, and together they can produce a Liberal Education which will be the envy of the country. So much for the education which goes on in the class- room. But there is a whole range of informal education which depends on the imaginative development 01' resi- dential life, of extra-curricular activities, and of contacts with the wider world of art, letters, and practical achieve- ment. Where the old College was austere, withdrawn, and even provincial, the new can expect to be better housed, better balanced, and fully in touch with the world around it. HLiberalfl in the old, undogniatic sense which it once bore, is a good word. It is still the best description of the quality which distinguishes an education for life from every inferior substitute. Chicago undergraduates have always been protected from vocationalism; in the New College they have also been freed from the fetters of any special philosophy. For a time We separated our- selves from the main stream of humanistic education. We have now rejoined its ALAN SIMPSON Dean of Ute Cotiege I3

Page 16 text:

The New College: Two views 12

Page 18 text:

Lowrey looks at spirit of college past, present, Future The New College presents us allestudents and facul- ties and that hybrid collection of individuals we loosely term Hcentral administrationllewith hard problems as well as great opportunities. Can a University whose central concerns have always been research and the training of graduate students develop the best four-year undergraduate program in the country? Can we, with a student body noted for its heterogeneity. build up the kind of esprit which marks the student bodies of Col- leges such as Reed and Vassar and Swarthmore and Grinnell and Sewaneeecolleges which, because of an insularity of one kind or another, and because of a dedi- cation to ltteaching. give their students a sense of focus, oneness, direction? Can we make a new College which will attract the best potential minds in the conn- try, which will over four years allow talent to mature faster, go farther, emerge better-trained and better- equipped than it would have had it been put in the seed- bed of Harvard, Stanford, a powerful, moneyed, state institution. or a small residential college? Well. we have resources that no other institution has, and we have a tradition. The tradition is one oi being uxilifferent. not out of eccentricity, but for very hard- headed reasons. The Old College pioneered because a group of men here knew most undergraduate education in America was hag-ridden by allegiance to the forms of the pasteand the efficacy of their Pioneering is per- haps best shown by the fact that Chicagols tlcontrover- sial ideas are now accepted by almost all of the great institutions in the country. Under one rubric or anu 14 other, most of the principles tend a lot of the materialsl developed here are now ltstandard? And resources? Anyone who has studied or taught in a variety of the colleges and universities in this country will tell you that Chicago has always been peculiarly blessed in hav- ing more toughminded, imaginative persons who are not afraid to try new things than any other institutione persons who have shown an amazing capacity for find- ing root problems and working out very practical solu- tions to them, In no other university or college that I know is there such a constant interchange of ideas as there is here, such a. vigorous and continuous iteross- polinizationll among disciplines. We have a deserved reputation of being disputatiouseour enemies call it chssedness and our friends uintellectual ferment? So we are changing things again, and I doubt that anyone will ever accuse us of imitation as we work out the new system. We will undoubtedly be accused of a lot of things-r-and a great many of the accusations, perhaps the most vitriolic ones, will come from inside our own structure. For which we ought to give thanks; that critical attitude is precisely our greatest asset. Free inquiry, free experimentation: as long as we keep those, we stand an excellent chance of developing some- thing which will bear out the justness of Mr. Jeffersonls remark. ttThe truth? be said, llcan stand by itself? PERRIN H. LOWREY Humanities