Opening Assembly

SELECTIONS FROM THE ADDRESSES AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS OF THE CONVOCATION

September 3, 6 and 1, 1957

PRESIDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE we celebrate here the tenth anniversary of just one of many experiments made by institutions of higher learning during this past twelve-year period in an effort to be more responsive to the demands of postwar conditions. This is the tenth anniversary of an experiment launched at Dartmouth and subsequently borrowed in one form or another by scores of institutions as we in turn borrowed from them, the Great Issues Course. . . .

This convocation is not merely an anniversary of this undertaking, but in both form and theme is an avowal by Dartmouth that education neither begins nor ends with college, and that even on a campus education goes on outside the classroom. In form, we want each of you to carry on the panel discussions for yourselves at meals, on the campus, wherever two or more are gathered together. And if this happens, we will have no doubts about this convocation's having been worth while for you and for the Anglo-Canadian-American Community.

The theme of the convocation was chosen for many reasons, some historical, some geographic, but basically because we believe that there is nothing more important today than that the people of these three nations should talk to each other, as members of a community, about the issues that both divide and unite them. This talk should be responsible and candid, as befits the talk of men and women of good will discussing any community problem.

Our view of the nature of great issues is that they exist because a man has a choice, both as an individual and as a member of a group; that issues are great when the outcome matters greatly to an individual man; and that great issues almost always have a past. Manifestly they have a present form, and almost certainly they have a long future if they are great issues and if the answers which any one generation gives are only the answers of the moment, because at the core of any truly great issue are the moral dilemmas and values of human experience.