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

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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

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exercises means mediocrity and ultimate decad nc.;. Our policy should he one of concentration and not dispersion. For the student it is a cruel deception to permit him to helieve that the quality of the education he gets depends upon the number of courses he takes. Rather he should be trained to do more and more of his work upon his own intellectual responsibility. From the administrative point of view, the formal courses offered will be stronger the more carefully their number is re- stricted; from the student ' s point of view, the quality of his work will be improved the more it results from his own efforts. At Yale we have accepted the principle of throwing increased responsibility upon the student. We test his intellectual achievement in the general departmental examination in the field of his major and we expect that his showing will depend largely, not upon the number of courses he has taken but upon his individual effort supplemented by special work in the reading periods or in small discussion groups. We permit him to reduce the number of formal courses taken in each of the last two years from five to four, provided his grades place him in the upper half of his class. In my opinion it is desirable, purely from the student ' s point of view, to make the four course plan not merely optional but mandatory, except for individuals who because of peculiar capacity have earned the right to especial privilege. In the case of the weaker student who must face his final general examination in his major field it is obvious that he can meet that test with improved chance of success if he has concentrated his effort with greater intensity than is possible if he is taking five courses in each of his final years. In the case of the superior student it seems evident that he should be given the opportunity to go faster and further in his chosen subject of special study. Assuming real intellectual quality in such a student, there is little danger of over specialization. Far greater is the danger that by reason of disperson of effort he will not get far enough in his subject of specialisation to appreciate its in- tellectual value. He can audit courses in other fields; he can acquire a broad cultural background by reading in his own study, by visiting the art galleries, or listening to concerts. The necessity of a fifth course is merely legendary.