Radio
From Dartmouth Hall
Just prior to his Great Issues lecture atDartmouth on October 18, Henry J. Taylor,ABC news commentator, made his regularMonday night radio broadcast from Dartmouth Hall. From his broadcast we print thefollowing excerpts dealing with DartmouthCollege and the Great Issues Course:
There was a time in these lovely New Hampshire forests when the King of England's men came through them to mark the very tallest pines with the mark of the King's arrow, reserving them for the sailing masts of the Royal Navy.
Dartmouth College goes back that far. It was incorporated in 1769 by a charter granted by King George III. ...
Much has happened since those days: to Dartmouth, to our country, and to education. But the problem remains the same; the problem of hoping that people will be taught tothink. .. .
The Great Issues Course here at Dartmouth attacks that problem.
The purpose is to bridge the gap between formal classroom instruction and external experience by having lecturers come here from the outside on a systematic basis.
The course contains reading assignments on the larger issues covered in the day's newspapers, and meets three time a week. It is compulsory for the entire senior class. The visiting lecturer, as in my case tonight, gives his lecture on a Monday evening. Then he stays over for a question-and-discussion period Tuesday morning, so the whole senior class has some time to mull it over before they come back at the speaker - a unique and, I think, very good arrangement.
I wish we had something like this, and patterned on it, at my own alma mater, the University of Virginia. Perhaps you can carry the idea as well to your own university. It was inaugurated here by Dartmouth's President John Sloan Dickey shortly after he became President in 1945, and has proved an enormous success.
You know, our country abounds in good ideas; if they can just be made better known, and can spread and grow and take their wider and wider place in the advancing life we all hope for and want and are willing to work for....
Once the American people know the truth about our workaday life - and especially the youth - so that we can intelligently turn our backs on misconceptions that retard our progress, we can advance in America to heights never known in the history of the modern world.
