Student Council Report on Education Favors Broad Areas of Study

I. Purpose

The purpose of this course is to acquaint students early in their college careers with the works of the men who have thought most originally and profoundly about the great themes of human experience. In this definition of the humanities we include not only works in philosophy and literature but those in the fine arts as well.

The course proposes to introduce students to the great minds of the Western world and to led them to some understanding of how and why they thought standing of how and why they thought as they did. The men, whose works will be read, fall naturally into the modern categories of literature and philosophy. By the common consent of generations they are the prime subjects of liberal studies. The familiarity with these minds, which is given by a two year course devoted mainly to the reading of their works, is essential to the type of education we advocate.

II. Organization

The organization of the course should be designed to facilitate a close and critical reading of the great works. To this end most of the classes must be section meetings to discuss the books, rather than lectures to expound their meaning. The committee believes that there should be two section meetings each week, and that the fine arts and historical material (to be described later) should be presented in lectures in the remaining period.

III. Content

The course proposes to deal with the fine arts as well as the liberal arts, and to relate both to an historical background. The committee believes that the essential material of the liberal arts cannot be covered adequately in one year. It also believes that an introduction to the fine arts is necessary if the degree of understanding of the humanities, at which the course aims, is to be reached. But it would subordinate both fine arts and history to the reading of the original written works, and use them only in so far as they supplement or illustrate these more approachable works of the humanities.

IV. History and Fine Arts

Neither the fine arts nor history, in our view, should be brought into the course as essential components of the humanities. Only where they supplement or illustrate the books are they introduced. We would treat both in the lectures that occupy a third of the course's classrooms time, dividing it roughly between them.

Conclusion

The student who has complete a course similar to the one outlined above will have been thoroughly introduced to the humanities. He will be most familiar with the disciplines of philosophy and literature, but he will also have an adequate basis for the understanding and enjoyment of the fine arts. The values which the greatest minds of the Western world attached to various objects, systems, and attitudes will have been presented to him, and he will know the actual circumstances under which they were produced. He may or may not make a choice of outlooks or systems of values, and while we do not expect each man to be an accomplished philosopher, he will at least be skeptical of new and hasty systems because he appreciates the intellectual effort which went into the making of those he has studies. Finally, his outlook will be broadened and probably deepened, and all his future work will be placed against a background of some of the greatest answers to the ultimately unanswerable problems of human existence.

Much work remains to be done on matters connected with education in the College. In this report we have attempted to lay the foundations for a system which might remedy some the defects that have been found to exist in the College's instruction. Next year's Council could expand our plan and make it even more specific, both in its content an its organization. The tutorial system, which the Teachers' Union investigated from the point of view of administration and personnel, might well be considered from the student's point of view, with the objet of discovering what part it actually plays in the education of different types of students and what might be done to improve it. We believe that all these problems should be of vital interest to students and that it is the Council's duty, as their representative, to concern itself with them.