"From the time he enters Yale, a student must be challenged to his individual maximum. A genuine continuity of courses within given areas must be created. An ill-prepared student must do extra work to meet standards adequate for his better-prepared fellows. Students should be given genuine responsibility to work with material in blocks rather than fragments. All educational training should be divided 'logically' into three areas, the natural sciences and mathematics, the social sciences and history, and the arts."

Necessities and Solutions

Starting with these problems, and these necessities, the committee has proposed two solutions. The first program is actually a transitional one, designed to develop a stronger undergraduate course for the freshman and sophomore years; the second, a permanent plan that would change existing college patterns and return to a large degree to the system used at Oxford and Cambridge. The student would be treated as an independent individual, and it would be his responsibility to study. What the program eventually calls for is an almost complete break with the current educational policy. Instead of day-today and week-to-week study, the Yale faculty would place greater concern on long range learning. At the end of each year a student would take a general examination based on his work. Preparation for this exam would come from attending special discussion classes once a week besides going to lectures at his own convenience. But if the student loafed through the first two years, and failed the exam, there would be no third or fourth year. The object would be to have learning more continuous and meaningful; students would not be constantly concerned with cramming.

Plan A assumes a five-course program for each of the first two years. All courses would be divided into the three areas, plus a fourth category called 'training subjects' for ROTC and elementary languages. A student would concentrate in one of the areas during freshman year, and two in sophomore year. He would also be required to take a course from both of the other fields each year. This would leave him two courses for ROTC, deficiencies, or electives. If he had more than one deficiency, he could not take ROTC.

Plan B, on the other hand, would substitute 'syllabi' in preparation for a general examination. An undergraduate would study two sets of syllabi in his area of concentration and one in each of the other areas. As in Plan A there would be room for ROTC or deficiency courses, but not both. The undergraduate, studying topics with such titles as "Democracy in America," and "Government and Economic Life in Contemporary Europe," would read from a list of books, either attend lectures or not, as he wished, and put in mandatory appearance at weekly 75-minute discussion groups.

While faculty reaction, for the most part, has been slow and reticent, the Yale Daily News quickly analyzed the report editorially. "Plan A is excellent," the News said. "It is imaginative and stimulating enough to cure most of Yale's ills as enumerated in the report. And yet it is not too demanding for the average student or the less than superhuman teacher. However the authors of the President's report envision Plan A as a mere step on the way to Plan B.

Plan B Syllabi

"Plan B will not work at Yale. Anymore than a Scholar of the House program for everyone would work. Plan B calls for a courseless curriculum, with no marks (except at the end of the sophomore year), and few class attendance requirements. We feel that Yale does not and never will have the student body or the faculty capable of handling such a plan. Not more than one per cent of any freshman or sophomore class would be truly worthy of benefiting from the idealistic and flexibility of Plan B. Students would be unable to 'dig in' and know where to start. Straight from the strict discipline of secondary school the average freshman would be lost in a world without marks or attendance rules. A year might go by before his first 'progress examination' told him he was in real trouble. The faculty on the other hand, good as it may be, could scarcely supply the top flight discussion leaders or world-shaking lecturers to ensure attendance."

"We do not mean our response to Plan B to appear wholly negative for like many purely idealistic schemes it has spinetingling excitement and appeal. But so does the idea of colontea on Mars, and trips through the outer space. But perhaps the committee has overstated its goals for Plan B, much like the salesman who quotes a price twice as high as he is willing to accept. For in a sense the Committeemen are salesmen trying to sell new ideas to a department dominated faculty that is high on sales resistance." Then, quoting a Yale administrator as saying departmentalism "is at odds with innovation and experimentation," the News called the report "the first encouragement that the departments' stranglehold on some aspects of faculty life will be ended."

Yale's president emeritus, Charles Seymour, however, took issue with the News, calling Plan B, "bold and far reaching; but it is nonetheless evolutionary in its nature. This is true despite the fact that the committee has utilized the experience of other institutions as well as its own imagination. My own personal feelings, and judgment," said Seymour, "run entirely in favor of the bolder Plan B. It calls for numerous adjustment to present practice and teaching methods. It would have to be set up within the circle of financial possibilities. Individual departments and professors would have to merge their apparent special interests in the large interests which, in my opinion, Plan B would serve. I am convinced, however, that this plan is not merely sound in its purpose and imaginative in its methods, but practicable as to its execution. As one surveys the course of Yale's educational development the historian is impressed by the opportunities that have been missed because of excessive caution. The present opportunity is one which I hope Yale will develop courageously."

Weiss Dissatisfied

Yale's most outspoken critic, Philosophy Professor Paul Weiss, unlike the News and Seymour, shares no enthusiasm for the plan. Weiss, an energetic little man says, "I'm willing to try any plan right now, that would improve Yale. But this plan doesn't answer the problem. That must be met by men working with students. The problem is to teach effectively despite all the plans, regulations and programs of the administration."

Weiss also attached the make-up of the committee, pointing to the fact that three historians, plus Griswold, a former history professor himself, compose the eight-man group. "We have here a historian's view of education. Harvard's committee was more representative of the whole."

"The committee's interests and doctrines account perhaps for the fact that the report shows little appreciation and sometimes little understanding of the nature, accomplishments and aims of religion and philosophy. They account perhaps for the fact too, that what the report stress in the social sciences, art and literature, are primarily the historical aspects.

Weiss criticized the committee's request to end the freshman year.