Yale Faces Drastic Curriculum Changes

Yale University, which has struggled through the first two hundred years of its existence by copying various educational policies of a founder college to the North, now faces a curriculum change so complete and startling, that it will probably take two years of discussion, bickering, and revision before any final action is completed.

Starting in the summer of 1952, and working steadily and secretly behind what the Yale Daily News termed "a ridiculous cloak and dagger security curtain," Yale's president, A. Whitney Griswold and a seven-man committee have completed a sixty-page report which attacks both the curriculum and the undergraduate, and then proposes a new program of General Education to correct Yale's weaknesses.

Early this Fall the report of the President's Committee on General Education was published. Divided into four main parts, it contains an analysis of what is wrong with the present-day Yale, a proposal for reorganization of the faculty, stressing less departmental power, and finally two distinct plans for course revision, particularly in the first two years.

Griswold Aloof

While this is the most important proposal in Yale education in the past three decades, the Yale faculty is for the most part a strangely silent group. Few professors comment in writing either way: if interviewed, they hastily mutter generalizations rather than specific suggestions. The reason for this is the strange circumstance surrounding the report. Griswold was on the committee, he wrote part of it, and despite a heavy silence from the president's house, the report is to a large degree a test of Griswold's power. Although he steadfastly refuses to push the plans, although he withholds all comment to reporters, although he will probably not say anything until final action has been taken, this is Griswold's report. He has approved of everything in it; and what it represents is the Yale College he wants. If the faculty votes against the proposal, then Griswold will be defeated, and since this matter is so important, it would probably mean the end of a great deal of his power.

That is why Griswold is staying as far removed as possible. That is why most faculty members will not talk for publication. That is why many of those who do preface their remarks with little generalities, praising the committee, praising Griswold, praising the report, praising Yale.

And that is why the report in some form should have little trouble going through.

Bitterly opposed as some faculty members probably are, few will ever be able to organize openly against the President of Yale University. And if the Griswold report is to be defeated, it will take an outspoken group of respected professors to organize a movement. In the meantime, professors are reluctant to commit themselves; they would prefer to find out exactly which way opinion is going.

Organized opposition, however, will probably never materialize. Department heads will undoubtedly work the proposals over viciously and amend heartily. But it is doubtful that they will try for a complete veto.

Certain problems and failings of present-day Yale caused the report. Griswold and his committee saw Yale struggling against many problems; "enormous diversity in the background, motivation and previous training of the students. As Yale has become a national university," they wrote, "it has inevitably had to cope with an increasing range of standards of college preparation." At the same time according to the report, Yale has been faced with the necessity of teaching basic non-college work on one hand-remedial English, elementary languages, and elementary mathematics--and to include training programs like ROTC on the other. "Even if we grant the fact that they are necessary, it is dangerous to let them limit our concept of the education we should give," the report claims.

External Problems

"These problems are external in the sense that their origins are not in the University's control; there are in addition two further problems, the product of powerful 'internal' forces. The first is an often legitimate failure of the student to commit himself to the work Yale offers; the second allied to this failure of interest, is the great complex problem of student maturity, or lack of it. Taken together these forces put a definite limit on Yale's effectiveness in the early years of college."

Analyzing extra curricular activities at Yale where students have often been accused of working not for the activity as an end in itself, but more as a stepping stone to campus prestige, the report charges, "a majority of students put second things first." It refuses to state exactly what curbs it would place on activities and athletics, but it attacks men who spend more than 10 hours a week on outside work. Just exactly how extra curricular activities would be run is uncertain. Since the curriculum change applies primarily to the first two years, most undergraduates feel that activities would start in the junior year, and no heavy responsibility would be accepted until the senior year. The exact effect on athletics is hard to determine, but most people think that there would be little change in either practice time or varsity scheduling.

The report also attacks the current exemption plan at Yale, charging it "fails to include enough students and often does nothing for the able man except transport him into a temporary intellectual limbo where he finds it impossible to do the demanding work in his major field of interest until junior year. The general purpose of each requirement is wise and valid; but in practice the basic studies slump toward-mere tool training, the distributional program scatters toward disorder, and the system of exemptions give freedom for advanced work, but fails to ensure it."

Thus having criticized Yale, the committee sets up a plan for the renovation of the first two years. First they feel a student with proper secondary education should be able to receive college credit for truly advanced work he has done before coming to Yale.

"From the time he enters Yale, a student must be challenged to his individual maximum. A genuine continuity of courses within given areas must be created. An ill-prepared student must do extra work to meet standards adequate for his better-prepared fellows. Students should be given genuine responsibility to work with material in blocks rather than fragments. All educational training should be divided 'logically' into three areas, the natural sciences and mathematics, the social sciences and history, and the arts."

Necessities and Solutions

Starting with these problems, and these necessities, the committee has proposed two solutions. The first program is actually a transitional one, designed to develop a stronger undergraduate course for the freshman and sophomore years; the second, a permanent plan that would change existing college patterns and return to a large degree to the system used at Oxford and Cambridge. The student would be treated as an independent individual, and it would be his responsibility to study. What the program eventually calls for is an almost complete break with the current educational policy. Instead of day-today and week-to-week study, the Yale faculty would place greater concern on long range learning. At the end of each year a student would take a general examination based on his work. Preparation for this exam would come from attending special discussion classes once a week besides going to lectures at his own convenience. But if the student loafed through the first two years, and failed the exam, there would be no third or fourth year. The object would be to have learning more continuous and meaningful; students would not be constantly concerned with cramming.

Plan A assumes a five-course program for each of the first two years. All courses would be divided into the three areas, plus a fourth category called 'training subjects' for ROTC and elementary languages. A student would concentrate in one of the areas during freshman year, and two in sophomore year. He would also be required to take a course from both of the other fields each year. This would leave him two courses for ROTC, deficiencies, or electives. If he had more than one deficiency, he could not take ROTC.

Plan B, on the other hand, would substitute 'syllabi' in preparation for a general examination. An undergraduate would study two sets of syllabi in his area of concentration and one in each of the other areas. As in Plan A there would be room for ROTC or deficiency courses, but not both. The undergraduate, studying topics with such titles as "Democracy in America," and "Government and Economic Life in Contemporary Europe," would read from a list of books, either attend lectures or not, as he wished, and put in mandatory appearance at weekly 75-minute discussion groups.

While faculty reaction, for the most part, has been slow and reticent, the Yale Daily News quickly analyzed the report editorially. "Plan A is excellent," the News said. "It is imaginative and stimulating enough to cure most of Yale's ills as enumerated in the report. And yet it is not too demanding for the average student or the less than superhuman teacher. However the authors of the President's report envision Plan A as a mere step on the way to Plan B.

Plan B Syllabi

"Plan B will not work at Yale. Anymore than a Scholar of the House program for everyone would work. Plan B calls for a courseless curriculum, with no marks (except at the end of the sophomore year), and few class attendance requirements. We feel that Yale does not and never will have the student body or the faculty capable of handling such a plan. Not more than one per cent of any freshman or sophomore class would be truly worthy of benefiting from the idealistic and flexibility of Plan B. Students would be unable to 'dig in' and know where to start. Straight from the strict discipline of secondary school the average freshman would be lost in a world without marks or attendance rules. A year might go by before his first 'progress examination' told him he was in real trouble. The faculty on the other hand, good as it may be, could scarcely supply the top flight discussion leaders or world-shaking lecturers to ensure attendance."

"We do not mean our response to Plan B to appear wholly negative for like many purely idealistic schemes it has spinetingling excitement and appeal. But so does the idea of colontea on Mars, and trips through the outer space. But perhaps the committee has overstated its goals for Plan B, much like the salesman who quotes a price twice as high as he is willing to accept. For in a sense the Committeemen are salesmen trying to sell new ideas to a department dominated faculty that is high on sales resistance." Then, quoting a Yale administrator as saying departmentalism "is at odds with innovation and experimentation," the News called the report "the first encouragement that the departments' stranglehold on some aspects of faculty life will be ended."

Yale's president emeritus, Charles Seymour, however, took issue with the News, calling Plan B, "bold and far reaching; but it is nonetheless evolutionary in its nature. This is true despite the fact that the committee has utilized the experience of other institutions as well as its own imagination. My own personal feelings, and judgment," said Seymour, "run entirely in favor of the bolder Plan B. It calls for numerous adjustment to present practice and teaching methods. It would have to be set up within the circle of financial possibilities. Individual departments and professors would have to merge their apparent special interests in the large interests which, in my opinion, Plan B would serve. I am convinced, however, that this plan is not merely sound in its purpose and imaginative in its methods, but practicable as to its execution. As one surveys the course of Yale's educational development the historian is impressed by the opportunities that have been missed because of excessive caution. The present opportunity is one which I hope Yale will develop courageously."

Weiss Dissatisfied

Yale's most outspoken critic, Philosophy Professor Paul Weiss, unlike the News and Seymour, shares no enthusiasm for the plan. Weiss, an energetic little man says, "I'm willing to try any plan right now, that would improve Yale. But this plan doesn't answer the problem. That must be met by men working with students. The problem is to teach effectively despite all the plans, regulations and programs of the administration."

Weiss also attached the make-up of the committee, pointing to the fact that three historians, plus Griswold, a former history professor himself, compose the eight-man group. "We have here a historian's view of education. Harvard's committee was more representative of the whole."

"The committee's interests and doctrines account perhaps for the fact that the report shows little appreciation and sometimes little understanding of the nature, accomplishments and aims of religion and philosophy. They account perhaps for the fact too, that what the report stress in the social sciences, art and literature, are primarily the historical aspects.

Weiss criticized the committee's request to end the freshman year.

"In the United States very few men leave home for prop school as early as the English do. Most of our men need some kind of orientation to a life away from home. Yale has a wonderful thing in the Freshman year. It has been much more successful than the report seems to indicate. Freshmen need orientation in the habits of living, the values of the institution, the nature of knowledge and the importance of study. It has been doing exceptionally well, and while it can be improved, it should not be abolished as the committee suggests. This one excellent thing that we have in the United States they want to abolish.

Make Yale Richer

"The committee would lop off a student's time, particularly if he be well-prepared before he came. His school-college life it would make only seven hours long. Why not instead make Yale a place where there is rich enough offering for everyone, making it worth-while to spend four years here no matter how bright or well-prepared the student be? Education is more than a matter of course. It is also a matter of time."

"But," adds Weiss, "there's no hiding the fact that we need to improve things. In the 20 years that I have been teaching at Harvard, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, and Yale, I have noticed a decay in spelling, grammar and ability to study. Some thing must be done. But no matter what system you have you will find the same problems; that of getting better men to teach. The best way to solve the problem is to make learning exciting. If you want excellent teachers you must give freedom to the teachers.

Yale's Good Sense

"I recognize the committee's good intentions, but I am sorry to say that I find little good in most of its diagnoses, in many of its analyses, and almost all of its remedies. I have heard that most of the faculty and alumni are right now opposed to the proposals, which shows the eminent good sense of Yale. But to stop something like this entirely, what with the president and a hand-picked committee behind it, would require a concerted opposition uncommon in academic circles. Eventually some form of it will probably go through. Fortunately, however, no gadget can stand in the way of a man determined to teach."

But, Weiss, as he himself realizes, is only one professor; the fact that Yale does need intellectual stimulation and a new curriculum, coupled with the very power of the president's committee and the value of the report, should bring major changes, as outlined in the report--within the next two years