Independence in Learning
Dartmouth launches its three-term, three-course curriculum, with the primary aim of promoting
DARTMOUTH'S 190th academic year began on September 22 with a special anticipation and a great deal more than the usual air of a new beginning that attends the opening of College each fall.
Launched at the same time was an educational adventure that has attracted wide attention in the college world and that will have far-reaching influence if it succeeds, as it intends, in bringing about a fundamental shift in higher education - from dependence upon teaching to independence in learning.
This larger objective was not so much in the limelight at the start, however, as was the rearrangement of the college calendar from the traditional two-semester, five-course program to the new threeterm, three-course plan. More than a change in mechianics, the new calendar is designed to avoid the disruption of academic work caused previously by a long vacation in each semester, and aims, by means of concentration on only three courses at a time, to permit the student to learn in greater depth and have more time for independent, self-directed work.
Since the standard course now meets four times a week instead of three, the number of class hours for each course will not be much less than under the semester plan. Now that the subdivision of student attention has been reduced from five to three subjects, and time outside the classroom can be used in a more sustained and effective way, the total amount of student time available for the individual course is substantially greater.
The new curriculum reduces by three (from 40 to 37) the number of courses required for the A.B. degree, but to offset this reduction in free electives, any student scholastically qualified is permitted to take two extra courses without charge.
Also helping to offset the loss of electees is another immediately prominent feature of Dartmouth's new educational program. This is the requirement of independent reading, to be devoted to general fields in the first two years and to the field of major concentration in the junior and senior years.
Dartmouth's new educational program continues the requirement that courses in the first two years be distributed among the sciences, social sciences and humanities, but the humanities requirement has been increased from two to three courses, two of which must be a double or sequential course. The foreign language proficiency requirement has been set at three terms of college-level study, with the expectation that most students will be able to achieve it by the end of the second term of freshman year.
More fundamentally important than the framework of degree requirements and "three-three" calendar is the rather complete reorganization of course offerings and teaching procedures that the faculty has been working on during the past year, getting ready for this fall's new program. Representative of these changes is the linguistics laboratory in 206 Dartmouth Hall, where 35 booths with taperecording machines will aid the student in acquiring a speaking knowledge of a foreign language. All students in the elementary language courses will be required to use the laboratory.
Also representative of reorganized course offerings and procedures is the new Freshman English program, inaugurated with the Class of 1962. English I will be devoted more intensively than formerly to improving each student's skill in writing. By means of a proficiency test during orientation week and records indicating adequate preparation, about one-fourth of the freshman class went immediately into English II. This course has been completely revamped so as to bring the student quickly to self-directed learning. It consists of small seminar-tutorial groups, each of which, under faculty guidance, selects its own study project.
Baker Library, which will be at the heart of the College-wide program of more independent work, has set aside part of the west wing of the Tower Room for the English II projects. There book collections related to the different projects are shelved separately for the English II sections. The Tower Room also offers a complete collection of the books for the general reading requirement, so students can browse through them before making their choices.
The extent to which independent work in Baker Library and elsewhere will replace the old system of textbook assignments, quizzes, classroom lectures, hour examinations and other time-honored routines will depend, more than anything else, on the spirit with which the Dartmouth faculty carries out the new program it has put into effect after endless hours of exploration, debate and planning over the past three years. The reorganization of courses and majors and the replacement of many of the traditional classroom sections with combinations of lectures, seminar-tutorials, laboratory sessions and individual conferences are not expected to make the teacher's lot an easier one. "Persuading a student to learn for himself is almost certainly harder and may be in some cases more time-consuming than teaching him," stated the introduction to the curriculum report adopted by the faculty in 1957.
But while the teacher's lot may not be an easy one, it can become a more satisfying and effective one under the Dartmouth program, claim those who shaped the new curriculum. Education at the college level, they say, should no longer be an extension of the grade-school and secondary-school method of having a student learn what he is taught. Higher education should be a cooperative venture between student and teacher, and between student and student, leading the college undergraduate to stand on his own feet in acquiring self-education, with faculty guidance and help, to do his own thinking, and to form the habit of independent learning that will stay with him the rest of his life. Teaching in these mature circumstances is a really challenging and creative business.
Last month at Dartmouth the educational adventure began. Three terms and three courses, plus a new reading requirement, are the obvious marks of the first major revision of the curriculum since 1925; but far more important and fundamental is the central purpose of it all - to shift the emphasis from dependence upon teaching to independence in learning.
