=

The material in this third group has traditionally been the parti-
cular province of the liberal arts college and should continue to be its
primary interest. The college should seek to develop a student's mind b
making him cognizant of the several fields of knowledge, by stimulatin
him to a thoughtful interest in them, and by assisting him to form a rational
basis for the moral and esthetic judgments which will determine the course
of his life. This must ever be the first duty of the college, and the major
emphasis should always be directed toward the accomplishment of this ends

 

 

Granted this assumption, however, to what extent shall the college accept
material from the first two groups, the vocational and professional subjects?
It is at once obvious that there is a certain amount of overlapping. Chem=
istry may be a vocational course for a pharmacist and a cultural course for
an artist. For prospective teachers, almost any subject that they may be
called upon to teach is vocational. The test should be whether a course is
cultural as well as vocational, whether it serves to broaden onets mental
horizon or centers attention upon some particular skill or technique.

It is also evident that, by our tests of mental effort and intellectual
discipline, many so-called professional courses are quite as difficult as
the traditional subjects of the libers1 arts curriculum, Here the important
question for the college is, not how much of such professional work the stu-
dent may be allowed to take, but how much of the traditional curriculum he
can afford to omit. In recent years we have crowded more material into four
years of college work and have tended to squeeze out those courses which seem
not to have an immediate practical value. Such a procedure inevitably viti-
ates our ideal of a well-rounded education, Possible solutions are the
development of curricula requiring additional time for completion and the
granting of several different degrees by the college, some allowing more
specialization than others.

As educators, we must also face the problem of those courses involving
manual skills, which do not require a high degree of intellectual effort but
which may be of great economic benefit to the student in his later life. In
many cases this work is handled in vocational schools, where emphasis on cul-
tural matters is distinctly secondary; yet there is an increasing demand for
& program which will give the student both the manual and the intellectual
training. Here the danger to the college is definite, arising from the fact
that many applicants for the manual training will not have the intellectual
ability or interest to do the work of the traditional college curriculum, in
which case the general quality of instruction will inevitably gravitate -
toward their level, The college will find its aims and purposes changed in
spite of itself, and a narrow careerism substituted for its former concept
of a wellerounded education,

While vocational training will occupy a place of importance in the
educational system, we feel that it should not be extensively adopted by
the liberal arts college. The college may allow credit toward a liberal
arts degree for a limited number of professional courses which require a
high level of mental effort. Insofar as any manual arts courses are allowed