SIGN OF THE TIMES

The generous cooperation of Professor Salvemini has placed at the disposal of the History department a potent instrument for the further liberation of College courses from the somewhat solitary confinement characteristic in the past. His intimate personal contact with the actualities of his field fits him peculiarly for his part in the present effort towards a pedagogical method which transcends the restrictions of an artificial unity.

The convenience with which so much of human knowledge is presented by merely "giving a course" has too frequently blinded educational authorities to the fact that the implications of a subject fully compare in importance with the appealing neatness which it presents when served up by one instructor and a set reading list. Only recently has the realizations that the minds of college students were becoming mere collections of pigeon-holed information, notable as much for the wide open spaces between as for the remarkable development of isolated subdivisions, forced educators towards efforts at integration.

Even after courses have been grouped together into fields the study of which is carefully supervised by department heads and tutors, there still remains the necessity of development from within the courses themselves. Only when the directors of individual courses realize that where their subject impinges upon another related one, it there also interlocks with it, can education really be said to possess proper coherence.

A particularly satisfactory method of impressing students in a given course with the inclusiveness which should be implicit in any pursuit of knowledge is the judicious addition of occasional lectures by authorities with varying points of view and experience in related fields. The present announcement of Professor Salvemini's appearance in connection with History 2 is fully in accord with the increasing flexibility of the course system.