THE HOPKINS CENTER

WHEN the details of the new curriculum with its three-term, three-course program were published last month, Provost Donald Morrison commented upon the significance of the changes and pointed out how they were planned to shift the emphasis at Dartmouth from dependence upon teaching to independence in learning. The first building on the campus that by design and organization will reinforce this determination to make the Dartmouth student increasingly responsibly for his own education will be the Hopkins Center.

The impact that Baker Library made upon learning at Dartmouth will be matched in force, though far different in form, when the Center opens its many doors. Even though the written and spoken word can now be reproduced and transmitted in seconds, man does not communicate by words alone. A simple definition of an educated man would be one who can be communicated with, and who can communicate to others. Dartmouth is now going to bring those other tools of communication - art, drama, music and crafts - out of the backrooms, attics and cellars around the campus where they have been talking to themselves. They will be brought together around the new aesthetic and social crossroads of the College. A basic premise behind a liberal arts education is the interrelatedness of all knowledge and culture. The Hopkins Center will enable us to demonstrate this concretely in its physical arrangement, in its working organization and in its educational program.

A beautifully designed, ingeniously planned, completely equipped group of specialized buildings will not of themselves add to the excellence of the Dartmouth education. The combination of the new facilities and a distinguished faculty will. The men now teaching in the fields to be represented in the Center have been operating effectively for many years in substandard conditions and in isolation. The extra vitality to be gained by having them teaching together in specially designed facilities will be great.

BUT even a great building with great teachers does not ensure superlative results. It will be the responsibility of the Educational Director of the Center to coordinate the activities, exhibitions, projects and programs taking place in the Center so that all the facilities of the buildings and all the talents and knowledge of the faculty and all the enthusiasm and energy of the students are exploited to the utmost. All-Center programs will be organized often and will give life to the hope which Provost Morrison expressed of "enabling students to learn without being taught," and to his further desire that education at Dartmouth be a cooperative adventure of student and student, and student and teacher.

If it is true that the only education worthy of the name is self-education, the Hopkins Center emerges as a unique educational tool which will reach and shape, to a degree, the life of every man on the campus. The thirty years of dreaming and scheming, the moments of disappointment have not been in vain. In its metamorphosis from just a large theater, as it was originally conceived, to its present concept as a true cultural center, the Hopkins Center has become as concerned with the education of the whole undergraduate body in depth and breadth as was the man for whom it has been named.