General Education
THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF GENERALEDUCATION, University of Chicago Press.Contributors: Dr. Albert M. Hayes '30, Reuben Frodin '33, and Prof. James C. Babcockof Dartmouth.
This volume is an authoritative statement of the objectives, historical development, content, and method of the general education program of the College of the University of Chicago. Since the program is one of the most imaginative efforts yet made to adapt liberal education in the context of industrial society, the book is worthy of the close attention of all those concerned with the education of American undergraduates.
As stated by its former Bean, Dr. Clarence H. Faust, the objectives of the College of the University of Chicago are those of an independent liberal college. It seeks, for example, to prepare "youth to deal with the personal and social problems with which all men in a democratic society are confronted"; to develop "power to form sound judgments with respect to those question which are the concern of everyone"; to "prepare students for experience to provide them with concepts, ideas, and principles by which experience, as it comes to them, may be rendered intelligible and by means of which they may, within the limits of human power, master and control it"; and to develop "men and women in whom the possibilities of human nature are realized to the limit of each individual capacity."
The Chicago program differs in four major aspects from that of most other undergraduate colleges. First, students are admitted to the college at the end of two years, rather than of four years, of high school. Second, students are admitted and placed in the program on the basis of examination, rather than on units of entrance credits and grades. (It would be possible, for example, for an unusually gifted person to be admitted to the second-year college program, after completion of two years of high school.) Third, the curriculum is built around a system of integrated and required courses in social science, humanities, and natural science, rather than upon a system of departmental elective courses and majors. Fourth, student achievement and eligibility for the B.A. degree are determined by collegewide comprehensive examinations rather than by credit standing earned in departmental courses.
The College of the University of Chicago has made notable progress in breaking down the artificial barriers that separate in many institutions of higher learning, related disciplines and related aspects of a single discipline. It has developed "general courses which deal rigorously with basic principles under the direction of teachers who have been educated not merely in departmental specialities but in the fundamental disciplines common to the field of the social sciences or the humanities or the natural sciences." Disciplines "having fundamental and essential traits in common" are grouped together; these "common traits make possible a treatment broader than that of individual, academic departments. Physics and chemistry from this point of view fall together; so do anatomy, physiology, botany, and zoology; so, too, do political science, sociology, economics, and anthropology; so, likewise, do literature, art, and music." Following: this principle, the curriculum consists of general courses in humanities, social science, and: natural science, and auxiliary courses in writing, language, and mathematics, all of which are described in considerable detail in this volume. These courses take the place of the specialized departmental courses that are characteristic of other colleges, including Dartmouth. There is no undergraduate "major" in the traditional sense; but the performance of Chicago College graduates in graduate and professional schools has demonstrated that the sequence of general courses provides an excellent base for subsequent specialization.
Real progress seems to have been made in reconciling the conflicting demands of liberal and professional education. The difficulties encountered by the faculty in resolving this conflict are related in interesting detail by Reuben Frodin '33.
Most students in each entering class take a year course in "English." (Those with deficiencies are assigned to remedial courses in writing or reading.) This course emphasizes the "preparation, criticism, and correction of student themes, of which twenty-five are assigned each year." The course is divided into three parts—exposition, argumentation, and style. Students are expected to use the knowledge of logical method which they acquire in other courses. The first-year course in "English" is the only "English" course, other than the remedial courses, in the College curriculum. Training in writing is continued in the third-year Humanities course, which builds upon the work of the English course. In fact, insistence upon the ability to write effectively extends throughout the college. Members of the English staff participate in other courses; "there is no senior member of the English staff who is not for at least one third of his time assigned to teaching outside the English courses."
A similar approach is followed with respect to foreign language study. Each student is required to pass a comprehensive examination in a foreign language and a supplementary examination in general language problems. The Faculty tries to extend the use of foreign language within the scope of the general courses in science, humanities, and social science. For example, special sections of Humanities are arranged, in which foreign language texts, rather than English translations, are used. The general language course, which is also required, is intended to provide insights into the nature and functions of language as an indispensable means of intellectual expression and communication. (This course is described in a chapter written by James C. Babcock, who resigned last year from the Chicago faculty in order to accept appointment at Dartmouth as Professor of Romance Languages.)
The requirement of "integrated, general" courses apparently does not provide automatically for all of the "coordination" considered desirable. In the last year an effort is made to relate the courses taken in the preceding years and to develop student ability to synthesize. The only "history" course in the curriculum is one of two integrating courses. The "History of Western Civilization" is at the end of the curriculum "because it is hoped that . . .
a study of the development of Western civilization will bring into one sort of intelligible relationship many of the ideas and much of the information which students meet in other courses." The purpose of the "Observation, Interpretation, and Integration" course is to give the student the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and ability necessary to work out for himself an intelligible theory of the interrelationships of the fields, of knowledge.
The Chicago curriculum is obviously an imaginative approach to the problems of liberal education. But, as Professor Leon B. Richardson once remarked, "No man can be saved by a curriculum." In his chapter on "Teaching," Professor Albert M. Hayes '30 emphasizes the point that at the College of Chicago, the faculty is primarily interested in teaching; "practically everyone who does it enjoys it." Professor Hayes reports that there is continuous experimentation, with the objective of devising increasingly effective teaching methods. In two of the fourteen courses taken in four years, class time is divided equally Between lectures and discussion sections. The main reliance, however, is upon "discussion methods." These methods may include student-led discussions and even "class-less weeks." "Eight of the fourteen courses in the curriculum make no use whatever of lectures."
As another publication of the Chicago faculty showed, and as we all know, some "discussion sections" are in reality dominated by the teacher, who may unknowingly do as much as ninety per cent of the talking. Almost all of the factors in the classroom act to encourage the teacher to "give the answers." That is what most students expect and want, and a teacher who is not articulate is seriously handicapped in his profession. It takes an experienced and determined teacher to follow consistently the philosophy expressed by Robert Frost in Mending Wall: ". .. I'd rather/That he said it for himself." Professor Hayes indicates that there is general agreement among the Chicago College faculty that this philosophy of teaching is the one most likely to foster learning. The aim is to "generate an activity in the minds of individual students," for "each student must finally grasp the object of knowledge for himself."
It is interesting to note that the college each year makes three awards of $1,000 each for excellence in undergraduate teaching. (Professor Babcock, now at Dartmouth, won one of the prizes in 1940-41 and Professor Hayes was one of the winners in 1947-48). And recently, the University of Chicago established special professorships in the college, "comparable in dignity and in stipend to those which it awards to members of its graduate faculties for distinction in research, to be awarded for 'excellence in teaching and in reflection upon the problems of undergraduate education.' "
In short, it would appear that other American colleges may learn much from Chicago's two-pronged attack (curriculum and teaching) upon the problem of providing more effective liberal education for American undergraduates.
Dean of the Faculty
