Revolutions & G.E.

The University's two General Education catch-alls on the Middle and Far East have maintained a never-slackening pace with events in those turbulent Eastern areas. When, for example, the Korean War broke out, the General Education course on the Far East, Social Sciences 111, merely added Korea to a list of countries that already swept much of the East.

But other than these two courses, there are none others, and in one world area, the course lack is particularly bad. This is South America. Here the gap is not due to G.E.'s inability to keep up with changing events. Rather, G.E., like the many State Department policy-makers and the North American press generally, has completely overlooked this crucial world section.

True, the History Department has shown some awareness of South America. But its single full course, half on Latin America's colonial period, half on Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, is far from adequate. By limiting itself to the ABC countries, it overlooks dangerous (for the U.S. at least happenings in other South American nations, notably Bolivia and Peru; and being a history course which stresses incidents, not general trends, it cannot hope to studey the background and significance of contemporary events in South America.

South America's situation in much like that of the Far East: a combustible combination of nationalism and communism. Added to this is the fact that more than one half of South Americans are on a starvation diet. They have little love for the absentee owners of in or copper mines. And while the Rockefeller Foundation project of supplying aid to under-developed areas has done some good, compared to Point Four it is not even skimpily satisfactory.

The United States and the free world will indubitably suffer from Latin dissension and revolution-unless more aid is soon forthcoming and educated Americans recognized and the dangers in the present South American conditions and aid in devising new policies. General Education could certainly contribute to the latter by offering a full course on the History of South America.