Compulsory Culture

Opponents of the required course delight in dragging into the argument a romantic description of what a university should be. A community of scholars dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and to the advancement of learning--such is the picture we have painted. Against this is raised a vivid scene to portray the iniquities of the required course--students frittering away their time in dead and uninteresting subjects at the expense of their true intellectual potentialities.

We do not of course presume to dictate a formal set of criterion by which education must be judged, but surely the concept of a community of scholars, each pursuing his own interests, is completely misleading from the standpoint of undergraduate instruction. As a goal to be pursued in the research faculty and in the graduate schools it may be valuable, but as regards the teaching of college students it is completely worthless.

Even were every student intellectually of the greatest promise, the abolition of all compulsory courses would be wholly unjustified. It is of course obvious that children cannot from the very first deliberately select their fields of study. The only difficulty comes in the precise determination of the age at which a man is sufficiently intelligent to make these decisions for himself.

College students of the Freshman and Sophomore years do not, in general, know where their interest lie and if they did, their training has not been sufficient to enable them safely to give full sway to their inclinations. Required courses are justifiable here for two reasons. In the first place they may actually convey sufficient knowledge of a particular field to be of cultural value long after graduation. A Bachelor of Arts degree has long signified in its possessor at least a smattering of supposedly broadening subjects. Regardless of what one may think of this viewpoint, it represents an ideal which is not lightly to be tossed overboard.

More important still, a required course may awaken the interest of a student in what is to him a hitherto unexplored field. It is often true that men are not anxious to study subjects about which they know nothing, and in which, for that reason, they have no particular interest. Yet if forced to take the course, they may develop a fascination for the subject which will become a vital part of their four college years.

We do not necessarily approve all the present courses now required. Some are probably unnecessary and should be replaced with others. A great many are taught from what is possibly the wrong approach. This does not affect, however, the fundamental thesis--that for the first two years of college to force all students in general to take a few specified courses, or courses in certain specified fields, is a basically sound policy. We hope that Yale will not go far in following the recent action of Vassar in sweeping away course requirements. Yale Daily News.