THE NEW CURRICULUM
Dartmouth's prompt reaction to the world events of the past four years is shown in the prominence given to requirements in History and Social Science in the new curriculum recently adopted by the faculty and approved by the trustees at their meeting of May 2.
This new curriculum is the result of more than a year of study and discussion by the faculty. It represents a carefully planned attempt to meet new conditions and to correct old evils by insisting at the same time upon breadth and exactitude. The first is sought by making the contacts of freshman year as wide as possible; after that, particularly in the Junior and Senior year, close specialization finds increasing encouragement.
No alteration is made in the number or entitlement of the degrees given for work pursued in course. As heretofore, Dartmouth will give the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. The requirements for each are materially different in several respects. While candidates for either degree will find courses prescribed in English and one other language, in Science, in the Social Sciences and Physical Education, those who seek the Arts degree must pursue one year's work in Greek or Latin of college grade, a year of Literature, a year of Philosophy or Psychology or a half-year of each together with a half-year of Ancient or Modern Art or Music.
Candidates for the Science degree must accept a prescription of Mathematics together with considerably more science than is demanded of Arts candidates.
All students will be required to take courses covering three and one-half years, of three hours per week, in History, Economics, Political Sciences and Sociology.
Freshmen will be brought into immediate touch with their future responsibilities as citizens by means of a required half-year course to be entitled "Problems in Citizenship."
I his is a distinct innovation. The course will be under direction of a member of the faculty who will devote all his time to it. He will call upon the departments of History, Economics, Political Science and Sociology to assist in its conduct. Every student will subscribe for one or more periodicals dealing with current social and political questions, and he will do a considerable amount of reading in a specially selected library.
A companion course to that in Problems of Citizenship will be a half-year course in Evolution, again required of all Freshmen. This course will be given by a group of professors selected from the scientific departments, under special administrative direction. The course is designed to serve as an introduction to the Natural Sciences. It will trace the development of the solar system, the evolution of the earth as a changing and developing body, the incoming of life, the evolution of plants and animals and of man. Its purpose is to broaden the outlook of the incoming college student, to give him a better idea of the place of science in modern thought, and to enable him to direct his later studies more wisely.
Despite the insistence upon courses dealing primarily with problems of human relationships. Dartmouth does not propose to abandon the classics or to diminish opportunities for the pursuit of the humanities. It is to be noted that students entering with Latin may, if they prefer, take Greek in Freshman year instead of Latin. If they have had no Greek before entering college, they may begin it in Freshman year. By continuing it through Sophomore year, they will cover the work of the ordinary preparatory course in Greek, and may then, if they choose to, go on with strictly college courses in Greek. This will enable students who come from schools where Greek is no longer taught, to supplement their classical training with elementary Greek, and so much of advanced Greek as they may wish to take.
To keep the field open for special studies in the latter part of the course, the prescribed work for either degree under the new curriculum can be completed by the close of sophomore year. In junior year the student will have considerable freedom of election, at a time when he is best fitted to make wise use of such freedom. One course throughout junior year must, however, be in the subject which at the beginning of that year the student elects as his "major".
The principle followed in the definition of a "major" is that in the second half of the college course specialization some one department, freely chosen, should increasingly occupy the time of candidate for the Bachelor's degree. This has long been the case with students of the Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance, the Thayer School of Civil Engineering, and the Medical School, all of which require highly specialized work of the student during his senior year. It is proposed to now extend the advantages of this principle to all students. Under the new system the courses which may be elected to make up the major course will be definitly prescribed by the department chiefly concerned, or restricted to a specified group of courses. The work will constitute one-fifth of the students' junior year program and three-fifths of that of senior year. The work of junior year and two of the three courses of senior year will ordinarily lie in one department, the third course of senior year being taken in an allied department and this serving as a complement to the main work. In some cases two closely allied departments will also unite in offering courses.
In all cases the work of a candidate for a major will be under the close supervision of the major department, and will involve very much more than elementary knowledge and discipline. All in all, the new Dartmouth curriculum presents an interesting and, it is believed, logical balance between the system of absolute prescription and that of wide open student choice of subjects. Of the 122 semester hours which are required for graduation, 68 are prescribed, with virtually no alternative, 24 hours must be devoted to specializing in a major: only 30 hours are free for unrestricted browsing.
his restriction of free electives is the result of the conviction that the requirements of modern life leave to the educated man no choice between knowledge and ignorance in the fields of fundimental human achievement, and that the college has no right to graduate men who have not even an elementary knowledge or those things which are essential to participation in affairs. Since the average student is often hardly competent to make a wise selection, and is further under the temptation to select courses according to their ease rather than their value, the College must in so far as may be, protect them in earlier years at least, against their own immaturity. But the opportunity for self development for each man along the line of his special powers is kept wide open and carefully safeguarded. The specific requirements for the degrees of A. B. and B. S. are printed below:
