It is always interesting to hear public figures wrangling over the content, or supposed lack thereof, of the courses offered in colleges today. Almost never does one hear the same figures discuss just what it is a college education is intended for. This is not a matter of little importance, for if two people start from different axioms, it should come as no surprise to them if they reach irreconcilable positions on what should be taught, and how it should be taught.
It is not my intention here to embark on a Socratic treatise. What I shall do is lay down the goals of a college education as I see them, and some of the practical consequences for education here at Dartmouth.
Let me start by saying that I totally disagree with those who see the purpose of going to college simply as a gateway to professional success. These "practical" people would have it that a person who choses to engage in the study of philosophy would be wasting his time, and that such a person would somehow be worth less than, say, a student training to be a dentist. After all, the advocates of "practicality" would exclaim, the philosophy major has no technical skills in great and immediate demand by the rest of society.
There are many problems with the above viewpoint. The first is that what will best serve the needs of a society in the long run is not always obvious. It may well be that those individuals who lose themselves in abstruse and impractical ideas will shape the future much more than the "useful" men of today. Euclid's ideas were not born of practical necessity, nor were those of even Isaac Newton, yet who would dare say that these men were of lesser importance than, or even merely the equals of, their contemporaries? Who would say so even of Plato, whose ideas have stood the test of time less well than the two aforementioned individuals?
A second problem with the "practical" viewpoint is that it discounts the possibility that the beneficiary of an education may count as much as, or even more than, the rest of society in determining the worth of his learning. So what if the things a person has learned benefit no one else? Must everything we do only be for the sake of others? Should we make our sole purpose in life that of increasing the GNP? It may well be that our philosophy major draws, and over the rest of his life, will continue to draw, great pleasure from the things he has learned and been exposed to. If the end result of an education is a happier and more enlightened individual, then it has been time and money well spent, even if the beneficiary never earns more than $30,000 anually.
Having said all the above, my purpose is not to endorse the view that the chief purpose of a college education should be to produce a "broad and well-rounded individual." Narrowness of focus also has its place, and "breadth" is not always a good thing. Many of the greatest scientific and mathematical minds of all time were by any definition extremely parochial in their interests. Paul Dirac, A Nobel Prize winner, and a seminal figure in quantum mechanics, is a case in point. Who would dare say that his education was substandard, considering the things it has equipped him to do? Yet, by means of distributive requirements, we try to force students to take shallow courses about things in which they are uninterested, and we take this as a boon to the students and mankind in general.
Another problem with the whole idea of encouraging "breadth" by forcing students to take distributive course is that it rarely works. A student who loathes mathematics or physics is hardly likely to be converted by Math 3 or Physics 3, and worse yet, is likely by his presence in such a class to act at best as deadweight, and at worst as a great hindrance to the enterprise of his classmates. The belief that, by completing a course with the ART tag in its ORC description, a student has necessarily somehow been "broadened" is simply credentialism. The all too common result of this rigmarole is mutual dissatisfaction between students and professors, and the festering of cynicism all round.
What should be done then? I think college administrators, public figures and the populace in general should give students the academic freedom which they (in theory at least) grant to professors. The College should put more faith in the ability of students to choose for themselves: If Dartmouth College thinks some of its applicants bright enough to deserve a place, it should be willing to trust them with enough sense to plan their time at Dartmouth wisely. Certainly the College should give its students advice on what it regards as more or less desirable in a college career, but it should cease to force-feed them as if they were helpless children.
