Problems of the Survey Course

Abstract

NO ONE is going to insist, I hope, that in one brief article final solutions are going to be proposed that will end all problems, even any minor ones, raised by the survey course. For anyone who has ever taught one, and I am speaking mostly about survey courses in French literature, the problems are many and obvious, some of them more or less superficial and dependent upon special circumstances and individual tastes. One could speak to the point, perhaps, about such matters as the location of survey courses in the curriculum, about criteria for the selection of students, about the language to be used in the course, or even about standards to be adopted in the choice of texts. Each one of these matters raises questions in the mind of the teacher; no one of them is central to this particular kind of course but each one will be answered in the light of particular circumstances present in a given situation. It may even be that problems which loom large are peculiar to special circumstances. It is the hope, of course, that a brief description of them may be profitable for others than myself faced with the same questions. No one will insist, I hope, that there is a single answer to any of them. Undoubtedly the survey course is here to stay, either as an orientation to be given early in the student's career and designed to provide a broad base for his later work, or as a review course for seniors who, in some schools, must take comprehensive examinations, or as a terminal course, broadly cultural in character, for students primarily interested in other disciplines and who will have no time for further work in French literature. For these students such a course will round out their work in