Education the Groove
THE story is told on campus of the venturesome member of the Class of 1960 who was attracted by the eloquence of the voice coming from a third floor classroom in Thornton Hall. Making a mental note that here was one professor he couldn't miss, the freshman hesitantly asked the nearby janitor what the instructor's name was.
"How old are you, son?" the man with the mop asked.
Seventeen was the answer.
"That's a record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt," the janitor said with a chuckle. "Us folks up here didn't take much to his ways but he sure did talk pretty."
Whether this story is true is open to doubt, but it's fact that many Dartmouth departments, including English and the foreign languages as well as the Speech Department on the third floor of Thornton, find considerable value in the use of disc recordings in class instruction and as a supplement to classroom work.
What is the educational effect of a superb Old Vic Theatre recording on a class studying Shakespeare? What does a Speech student get from studying the techniques of the late President Roosevelt or Sir Winston Churchill? What impact does a New York Philharmonic rendition of Beethoven have on beginning or advanced music students?
Determining the exact degree of effectiveness would be next to impossible, but ever-increasing record collections in campus departments and the desire to go one step farther with tape recording mechanisms provide ample evidence that, wisely used, such reproductions can add greatly to a student's educational experience.
In the Speech Department collection, more than 100 FDR records share shelf space with oral presentations by other great British and American governmental, theatrical and artistic leaders. The voices of William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson and Churchill are all available at a moment's notice to young men seeking to master the spoken English language.
Fiorello LaGuardia, a man whose voice was certainly no asset to begin with, assaults the student ear to demonstrate vividly that even the raspiest of sounds can be made an effective tool in oral communication. Other records in the large collection illustrate variations in the American use of the English language and proper techniques in diction and presentation.
Each of the Speech Department's three Thornton Hall classrooms is equipped with a phonograph and a tape recorder to enable professors to make use of the recorded word in class work. Often excerpts from various records are put on tape to show, by letting the student hear great speakers of the past, the differences in voice variation, pitch and rate. The classroom equipment is also available in nonclass hours and at night for student use.
For some Speech courses, especially the beginning course, the department makes two disc recordings of each student's presentation - one at the,outset of the course and the other near the end. The tape recorders in the classrooms, plus one kept at Baker Library and loaned out like a book, provide daily opportunity to test new skills on a less permanent basis.
Faculty members of the French Department also tape excerpts from disc recordings of French prose and poetry to present in class sessions. French language students have available a record library that includes presentations of the works of such authors as Racine, Maupassant, Corneille, Colette, Moliere, Cocteau and Gide.
A special room in Dartmouth Hall is equipped with both phonograph and tape recorder, and smaller advanced classes gather there to follow the play or poetry in their text or just to listen. For larger classes, the equipment is taken to the classroom. French students are provided with keys to the special room for nighttime listening.
Professor George E. Diller believes use of recordings to be a valuable adjunct to class work, especially in advanced French literary courses, in giving the students more comprehension of the readings in class. He often supplements the departmeri's substantial library of both literary and instructional records with selections from his personal collection.
Faculty members in the Spanish, Russian and German Departments also make use of recordings. While these record libraries do not compare with the French collection in size, all three contain the same variety in linguistic and literary presentations and are increasing each year.
In addition to the value in listening to the works of Calderon, Pushkin, and Goethe in their native tongues, language instructors cite the importance that records have in offering the students pronunciations other than the teacher's.
FOR English students, the department's collection of more than 400 records in Sanborn House offers a wealth of great literary works on discs. At times you'll find a whole class in Sanborn's Wren Room savoring the delights of Vachel Lindsay's poetry or of Hamlet as performed by John Barrymore or John Gielgud.
More often there are one, two or a handful of men, especially around examination time, following a complete performance of Macbeth or Othello in their text books.
The collection offers such varied presentations as Margaret Webster's version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Raymond Massey in Robert Sherwood's Abe Lincoln inIllinois, Basil Rathbone reading from Dickens, John Gay's Beggar's Opera, Shakespearean sonnets and music from Shakespearean plays, early Scotch and English ballads and a large number of great poets, living and dead, reading from their own works.
Plans are under way for even greater expansion of the English Department facilities with two new recorders, with earphones, under consideration for the Sanborn House Library. The collection also increases yearly with new recordings of Shakespearean dramas added as they come out. New acquisitions this year have added to the George Bernard Shaw representations with Siobhan McKenna's portrayal of St. Joan. Sheridan's School for Scandal is now part of the library, too.
Across campus in Bartlett Hall, recordings play an important part in the everyday class work of the Music Department. Every course in music utilizes recordings in regular sessions, many requiring outside study of recordings as preparation for scheduled lectures. Various works from the department's large collection of classical and operatic pieces, played in whole or in sections, are useful in adding to the beginner's "appreciation" and the advanced student's perception of technique.
The Music Department's record library was expanded substantially this year by the donation of a large private collection belonging to Warde Wilkins '13.
Music study by record at times other than the class hour is also an important part of the department's program. For beginning students, three hours a week are set aside when the student can listen to the selection being studied, with an upperclass monitor on hand to answer questions. The monitor system is also used for other periods each week when students can request any recording from the department's collection.
For advanced students the department has set aside a small room in Bartlett with a special phonograph, for pleasure listening as well as study.
For the student who wishes to take a classical recording to his dormitory room or for the English student desiring a poetry selection to be played on his own phonograph, the Tower and Poetry Rooms in Baker Library have special collections for 48-hour loans. Phonographs with earphones are also available in both rooms for library listening.
The record library in the Tower Room was inaugurated in the fall of 1955 in cooperation with the Music Department, which transferred some of its funds to the project. The popularity of this lending service is evident in the Bgures showing a weekly average of 185 student withdraw als. The Tower Room collection now numbers over 500 classical and semi-classical albums. At the end of the last college year the Undergraduate Council turned over $300 from its treasury for the purchase of new records.
On a smaller scale the Poetry Room is also popular. Seventy loans a week is the average for the recorded poetry readings by such men as Auden, Eliot, MacLeish, Sandburg, e. e. cummings, and Dylan Thomas, and the prose readings of Maugham, Steinbeck, Isherwood, Huxley, Ferber and others in the Columbia Library Series. Robert Frost is well represented here, as he is in the record libraries of the English and Speech Departments.
It is indisputable that recordings, like educational television, will never replace the lecture or text book, but from professorial comment and actual, increasing use today, the flat, grooved disc and its tape and wire kinfolk do have a definite place in Dartmouth's educational picture.
Records being used in a Spanish class, taught by Coleman R. Jeffers.
Students in Music I listening to records in preparation for class. The course aims to stimulate enjoyment of music by developing intelligent listening.
Professor Ives and his Speech 16 students hear a Dylan Thomas recording.
A corner of the Poetry Room in the library.David Yarosh '59, browsing aurally, listensto a reading by poetess Edith Sitwell.
In the Tower Room, Roland Pollard '57 signs out two albumsto be taken to his room. Edward L. Terrace '57 is the attendant.
