What will the Colleges Teach?

Abstract

H UNDREDS of thousands of young men and women have hammered at the doors of our colleges and universities. Many knocked in vain, for the colleges could not meet the unprecedented demand. What of those who are admitted? Their main purpose in enrolling is that they may learn. Our common concern is with what they will learn. The problems which the United States faces today will not be solved by graduates whose intellectual and spiritual nourishment is received at the cafeteria counters of our pre-war college curriculums. Technical courses, which have their place, do not equip a student with the social and political wisdom necessary today and tomorrow. The liberal arts have too often failed to free the creative energies of young men and women for socially constructive ends. Fortunately, the leaders of higher education are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers inherent in the current departmentalization of knowledge. Hundreds of institutions are revising their curriculums in a search for ways of avoiding overspecialization. They are seeking to re-emphasize the main branches of learning and to help the student to achieve an integration of his knowledge which will enable him to become an intelligent and constructive citizen. No one can make his maximum contribution to modern life who does not know one area better than another and better than the large majority of his fellows. But the general knowledge our students gained in elementary and secondary schools is an insufficient basis for useful specialization on the college level. The young man or woman who would live a broad satisfying life will use the opportunities which come in college, and in his life after graduation, to broaden the basis upon which his specialized knowledge can securely be built. Learning at its best results in wisdom. Wisdom can be achieved only by the man or woman who has learned the meaning and, in general, the methods of all the main branches of knowledge and has welded them into a well-proportioned unity. Learning in college should be based upon a recognition of the organic unity and of the potential spiritual unity of our young men and women. While the different branches of learning place different emphasis upon various phases of experience, the learners are the same individuals working with the same set of general abilities in the different areas. Who has studied music or art without recognizing mathematical relationships? Who has learned natural science without calling on the power of imagination which is also essential in the creation and appreciation of art? The