Hutchins Hits Past
Hutchins during his speech painted a gloomy picture of the trends of education in the past several centuries. The dominant feature of the medieval college, he said, was the disputation. The age of debate gave way to the age of discovery. Inquiry was promoted by specialization and the experimental method.
The age of discovery, he continued, followed by the age of digest, the period of the fragmentary, the topical, the diverting, the uncomprehending trifle. "It is no longer assumed that people can think; it is known that they can be pleased or put under pressure. The education which was the hope of all democrats from the earliest times has not been enough to produce a race of thinkers. It has been just enough to produce a race of victims."
GE Program Here Outlined
Conant sketched the character of Harvard's General Education program for the New York educators and noted that it could probably be of assistance in developing trained personnel to man the faculties of two-year colleges.
The importance of independent corporations such as universities in the role of protectors of democratic action, is deep seated in the American tradition, Conant noted. Before the growth of universities, local control and responsibility rested in the hands of independent church organizations