Signs of Health

In any educational institution of the first rank things are never as placid as they seem on the surface. A ferment of ideas, a spirit of critical self-examination, these are the marks of a college that is intellectually alive.

Self-scrutiny has never been a missing ingredient in Dartmouth's make-up. It goes on constantly, particularly with regard to the College's educational program, but there are times when it is more submerged than in plain view. This spring, in Hanover, the spirit of self-examination burst through the surface in two reports, one by the faculty, the other by the students, both dealing with teaching, the curriculum and the "intellectual climate" at Dartmouth.

The faculty report was made by an eleven-man committee of the Dartmouth Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which embraces about half of the active Dartmouth teaching staff. The student report was made by the Undergraduate Council's Academic Committee, composed predominantly of seniors but having men from all four classes among its thirteen members. Common to both reports was a strong affirmation of learning as the real business of the College and a dissatisfaction with the extent to which this primary purpose is being realized. An interesting divergence was the faculty claim of intellectual apathy among the students and the undergraduate assertion that students are capable of meeting stiffer standards of work than their professors demand.

Neither of these reports has any "official" character, an there are varying opinions about their proposals, but together they form an important expression of some faculty and student thinking about the central business of the College. Keeping Dartmouth alumni posted about such thinking is one of the vital functions of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE; and we print here the full text of the faculty report and a summary, with some sections in full, of the student report. Both reports should be helpful to the regular Faculty Committee on Educational Policy and to the Sub-Committee on Educational Program Planning, under the Trustees Planning Committee, which is now carrying forward a major study of Dartmouth s whole educational program.