The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-02-02
Liberal Viewpoint
by DIR. HARRY ELMER BARNES
AYDELOTTE

president FRANK AYDELoTTE of
L Swarthmore College has developed repu-
tation for educational liberalism intellectual
progressiveism and executive leadership.
Therefore one may be legitimately amazed at
the enunciation of an apparently narrow, archaic
and illogical educational philosophy in his latest
annual report. That Dr. Aydelotte understands
the problem is certainly clear from his excellent
statement Of it:
During the last fifty years the developments
in the different fields of knowledge have been
so vast that the problem of giving the under
graduate any adequate idea Of the geography of
the intellectual world has become enormously
more difficult.
The problem may be attacked so far as the
undergraduate is concerned, in two opposite
WayS-by giving him thorough grasp as
possible of one field and leaving it to him to
spend the rest of his life in widening the circle
OF his knowledge; or, on the other hand, by
giving him birdSeye view of the whole world
OF knowledge and leaving it to him in later life
to concentrate upon some one subject and to
learn to know that as thoroughly as he can.
The second approach is that of the so-caled
orientation courses, which have during the last
few years, become so popular in American COL
legeS and universities. 1t is in harmony with the
tendency of American education to accept super
hciality as the price of comprehensiveness"
DRESIDENT AYDELOTTE vigorously attacks
l. the orientation approach in college instruc-
ton He recommends intensive specialization in
some narrow field of knowledge with the hope
that the student will later broaden out his
interests after ne mas left college and give
himself that wider and more adequate education
which many now expect college to provide.
One may legitimately raise the question as
to whether educational specialization inevitably
creates breadth Of view and zeal to extend
ones intellectual horizons. 1t is certainly safe
to say that there is little basis for such belief
in the educational experience of the past.
The alleged breadth of those who were
trained almost exclusively in the classics is
purely illusory. They were broad only in the
vague irrelevancies which inevitably inhered in
the classical type OF education They were
abysmally ignorant of all the realities of con-
temporary lfe-as Thomas H. Huxley once
pointed out in a cauStic and classic passage.
Moreover specialization, of the type which
is possible in an undergraduate course, is no
specialization at all. Today the specialist is not
biologist or physicist, but a man who has
given his entire lifetime to some narrow SUBJ
department of one OF these fields. Even so it
may progress so rapidly as to escape him. One
of the most famous of American mathematical
physicists committed suicide not so many years
ago because he alleged that his subject was
getting out of hand, and he could not keep up
with it.
1T is obvious, therefore, that the college I'M
dergraduate can never become true special
ist in four years, while if he did his knowledge
would soon become out of date within a few
years after he left college, He would therefore
be in the unenviable position of knowing only
little about something, with even this little
becoming daily more messy and moldy.
1t is becoming progressively more obvious
to thoughtful educators that there can be no in
telllgent handling of college education unless
we dlfferentiate sharply between the types of
students involved.
There is a small minority of high ability, quail
lied to de research work, and intending to 90
on to some type of specialized professional work
For these specialization may be the best thing in
the world, but it never should be purchased at
the price of narrowness and bigotry
For the majority, the orientation course is
the only sensible plan for undergraduate in
Structlon. What we should have is not restric-
ton of this development but a vast extension
of the program until it embraces majority
OF the courses offered to undergraduates
In my opinion the contemporary civilization
course at Columbia College is the most i'm
portant since the Civil War with the possible
exception of the elective system first made DOS
sible by President Eliot of Harvard
No one need contend that Orientation courses
are 100 per cent perfect But comprehensive
Superfciallty is certainly to be preferred to alb
Ject ignorance upon nine-tenths of the reali-
ties OF our day. and imperfect and out of date
knowledge of the remaining one-tenth