Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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■It; - ' r tr NsSvi . ' . ' ' ». ' ;■■ ■ ■ ' 4 ■:;U .;4 iL ' v ' i ' i? ' • !?. $j mi ADMINISTRATION

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C rom the physical to the dynamic we move and at the head of dynamic Yale are its leaders. Anarchy might do for Thoreau, but Yale trusts in administration to assure a smooth course of action. Corpor ' ate affairs and freshman proms require direc ' tion and coordination. So do staid Seniors and learned Faculty. That you may here appreciate the sine qua non of Yale, we bring you the following section.

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How V)ftany Qourses VyCa e an Education? BY CHARLES SEYMOUR (T he outstanding fact in the history of the American college of arts and sciences during the past - fifteen years has been the advance in the intellectual maturity of the undergraduate. This has been manifested partly in the interest he has come to take in subjects that provide a cultural basis for life but which do not necessarily form part of the regular curriculum and which are related only indirectly to the major field in which the student will take his examination. Vastly increased interest I in the formal curriculum itself has also developed among undergraduates, at least when they are compared with their predecessors of thirty years ago. The colleges have taken note of this more mature attitude and have changed in some part their curricular methods to take advantage of it and to stimulate it. More stress is laid upon the intellectual achievement of the student; there is less tendency to make a bachelor ' s degree depend upon an accu- mulation of credits which the student has acquired by passing through isolated courses. More important still is the growing recognition on the part of the college that the quality of the education acquired by the individual student will largely depend upon the intellectual effort of the student himself; that it is for the student to teach himself how to learn. The function of the faculty is not merely to poke knowledge down the student ' s gullet and examine him upon the undigested mass. It is for the faculty to show the student how to evaluate the knowledge he acquires for himself and stimulate him to develop his critical and appreciative capacities. The educated man is the one who has learned how to educate himself. Nothing surprises our academic visitors from overseas more than our traditional American system of formal classes, in which the student ' s work is carefully doled out three times a week and an appreciable portion of the teacher ' s time and effort is given to the mere checking-up of the stu- dent ' s work and the recital of facts which the student might have learned for himself. Nothing is more encouraging than the tendency in the American college of today to throw more responsibility upon the student, as well as the willingness of the student to carry an increased responsibility for his own education. Formal classroom exercises certainly cannot be dispensed with entirely. For elementary exercises and introductory surveys they provide the most effective help to the student. Formal lectures for advanced students are equally desirable, provided the college can provide men of distinguished scholarship and capacity for oral presentation. Our American colleges have been characterized by a great lecturing tradition which has given us an outstanding advantage, in one respect at least, over our British cousins. At Yale it is important to perpetuate this tradition, set by such great lecturers as Sumner, Wheeler, Brewer, Lewis, Lull, Phelps, and continued worthily in our present faculty. But the formal recitation and the formal lecture should be restricted so far as possible, in the case of the former to unskilled students in elementary work, in the case of the latter to really great lecturers. Recognition of the desirability of throwing more responsibility for his own education upon the student would lead naturally, one might say, to a diminution in the number of formal courses offered by the college. The more the student learns by himself, the less need of formal instruction. The actual history of recent years, however, has belied this probability. Almost everywhere the colleges have multiplied the number of courses offered, dividing and subdividing subjects of study, and only too often setting up courses of a purely factual and descriptive character. We have been hypnotized by academic myths. The students and their parents have apparently believed that the more courses taken, the better the education; the college administration seems to have been guided by the equally prevalent legend that the more courses offered, the greater the educational distinction of the in stitution. There is real danger in this multiplication of formal courses. Given the inescapable fact that academic income available for educational purposes is threatened by the fall in the rate of return upon invested endowment, it is clear that a continual thinning of the amount spread upon teaching