Curriculum Changes Announced
CHANGES in the Dartmouth College curriculum, providing for a wider range of subjects in the first two years and featuring a required senior-year course in Great Issues of the Modern World have just been announced by the College following their adoption at two special meetings of the full faculty.
The program of the Committee on Educational Policy, synthesizing recommendations of all three divisions of the faculty, does not constitute really a "new" curriculum, but affords within the framework of the present liberal arts curriculum a number of changes designed to increase the Dartmouth graduate's understanding of the postwar world and his leadership as a citizen. The program adopted will go into effect next fall.
The "Great Issues" course to be required of all seniors is designed to bring the knowledge acquired by the student in the first three years of college into sharper focus on the great national and international problems which confront him, and to increase his awareness "of the obligation to use knowledge in making decisions and taking action." The course will deal with vital issues in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and under a special director will feature lectures each week by distinguished authorities visiting the campus.
An increase in the range of subjects taken in all divisions of the curriculum will be achieved partly by an increase in the amount of prescription in the freshman and sophomore years—7o% as compared with 60% at present—and partly by the offering of one-semester general courses in satisfaction of the distributive requirement. This requirement embodies the committee's belief that a broad, general education in the humanities, social sciences and sciences should be the basis for every Dartmouth man's course of study, regardless of later specialization. Provision is made, however, for exempting from these prescriptions any student who can demonstrate through proficiency tests that he has already satisfactorily acquired the content of any given course. The hours thus released may be used for free electives in any field.
Aside from the "Great Issues" course, the curriculum for junior and senior years follows the present plan of specialized work in a major field, with honors work permitted for the outstanding student and a comprehensive examination required at the end of senior year. Modified majors, cutting across departmental lines, are also recommended for continuance.
The total of isa semester hours credit required for the bachelor's degree comprises 50 hours of general education requirements, 42 hours of free electives and 30 hours of major study.
The new one-semester introductory courses in most departmental fields are designed as "ends in general education rather than as means toward specialized education," being intended to contribute toward broad intelligence in the arts and sciences rather than as factual or technical drillcourses considered merely as prerequisites to advanced specialized work.
A new sophomore course in Classics of European Literature and Thought will deal with the western cultural tradition through a number of great books. Provision is made for the use of modern methods of teaching foreign languages through optional "intensive" courses carrying double credit.
As revised by the faculty, the requirements for the Dartmouth degree, starting with the class entering college next fall will be as follows: English 1-2; one year of a foreign language offered for admission or two years of a language started in college; two semester courses chosen from art, music, philosophy, classical civilization, and classics of European literature and thought; four courses from four different fields among economics, government, history, psychology, and sociology; four semesters of work chosen from astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics and zoology; freshman hygiene 1-2; physical education in freshman and sophomore years; a major study according to the regulations of the College; the senior-year course in "Great Issues"; and free electives to bring the total to 122 semester hours.
In its report to the Dartmouth faculty the Committee on Educational Policy stated that it has under consideration plans for increasing the student's participation in the educational process and for improving methods of student guidance, on both of which matters recommendations will be made later. The revisions of the curriculum have been worked out cooperatively with the divisions of the faculty, after lengthy preliminary discussion and organization by a sub-committee on the curriculum, headed by Prof. Hugh Morrison '26 of the Art Department. They were submitted to the faculty after approval by the Committee on Educational policy as a whole, under the chairmanship of Prof. Charles L. Stone 'l7 of the Psychology Department.
In one section of its report the committee defined the chief distinction between specialized technical education and liberal education which Dartmouth has traditionally offered for the past 175 years. "The former," the report states, "assumes a limited horizon and a fixed goal; it assumes that the student can predict what few subjects he needs to know for vocational competence, and that we can teach him those subjects. The latter assumes a limitless goal: that our job in the liberal arts college is not to teach a student what he is to know, but to extend his intellectual horizon and increase his capacity for learning, throughout life, in endeavors and fields that we cannot now even guess at. The one regards education as a product, the other regards it as a continuing process."
