The Public Affairs laboratory operated by the course, is little more than la replica of a periodical room in any good library, with the addition of staff offices and exhibits which change weekly according in the topic under discussion. Recently, when Mass Media was being discussed, sections of the Times were tacked on bulletin boards around the room. Each sections was marked in heavy crayon with such advice as "The sports section: for leisure and relaxation," or "Financial section: we don't have to tell an Economics major that this is a valuable part of the paper."
A Turbulent Transition
There is no question that Dartmouth brings important men to speak to its seniors. Speakers who have appeared in the past few years include such named as Dean Acheson, Sherman Adams, Crane Brinton, Dean Bundy, President-Emeritus Conant, Raphael Demos, Irwin Edman, Erich Fromm, Wilbur K. Jordan, Owen Lattimore, Archibald MacLeish, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Paul J. Tillich.
But there is some doubt whether a man, regardless of his competency or insights, can avoid being super field if he gives only one lecture on his field. How can the student avoid touching only very high points of a problem or a philosophy by such hasty and touchy sampling? Dartmouth's Great Issues course, admittedly still in the experimental stage, must fact this sort of probing. Because it is probably fair to say that the Dartmouth student generally seems to be less critical than his Cambridge counterpart, it is possible that he benefits more from this sort of course.
The Dartmouth course does achieve a very significant goal: every student, regardless of his interests, is thoroughly subjected to current affairs, even if he does not always appreciate their deepest significance. Not everyone agrees exactly as to what these affairs should be. Most concur, however, that a great issue is a problem which has a "moral core as well as historical depth, meaning for the present land a projection into the future.
'What it Was About'
As well as offering this form of transition to the outside world for seniors this year Dartmouth has established a common course for freshmen, "The Individual land the College," designed to help incoming students make the sudden transition to academic life.
All colleges face the problem of awakening their bewildered, often unsophisticated freshmen to academic life. Harvard's solution of busy professors or inexperienced graduate student advisers is not wholly satisfactory. But whether or not Dartmouth's guidance program is more desirable is a question with which college administrators must soon deal.
The freshman course is designed ostensibly so students cannot say "I wasted the first year or so of my college erudition before I really began to understand what it was all about."
But it is less of an outline of the purposes of liberal education than it is a discussion of social adjustment under pressure.
The course opens with a series of five lectures on the history, traditions, and functioning of Dartmouth; this is followed by a one-lecture discussion of the intellectual life, its motivations, and rewards. Two lectures on reading land study habits follow succeded by several talks on the relationships of diseases and human physical breakdown to emotional and academic pressure on the body.
Next may come a discussion of the advantage of planning one's life career while still in college, followed by a review of the religious life in college and talks about social responsibility.
The most striking thing about this program is the lack of importance of the liberal education, intellectual experience, per se. More stress is put on the practical aspects of college success which are important enough, but which are already prompting Dartmouth undergraduates including freshmen to wonder whether or not the college has missed a few things in its experiment. They wonder whether the difference in capabilities and background of students has not been overlooked. It is questionable whether all Dartmouth freshmen need equal amounts of instruction in reading and study habits and in health education.
If Dartmouth is to continue its common freshman course many students feel that the instruction in reading and medical problems should be left to those who need it. Instead, it should provide booklets, newspaper writer-ups and optional lectures on Dartmouth history and tradition, and spend more course time on the traditionalism of liberal education.
The Wearing of the Green
At present certainly, rather than stimulating individuality, the freshman course seems to be a mere mechanism for furthering the administration's program of keeping Dartmouth men interested in Dartmouth tradition, informality and intimacy.
While green sweaters and chinos seem to be the clothing standard at Hanover, there are places where students wear coats and ties. This is a paradox. While being Collegiate seems to be the intellectual standard at Dartmouth, there are places where students wear sober expressions. This is even more of a paradox.
For while Dartmouth proudly proclaims that one of its distinguishing--and distinguished--features is that "it is predominantly an undergraduate college and not a university," there are three graduate schools on the Hanover campus.
The Tuck School of Business Administrations, the Thayer School of Engineering, and the Dartmouth Medical School all have a straight and narrow row to hoe. While they are independent of the College, they are all guided, as Karl A. Hill, Assistant Dean of Tuck puts it, "by a full awareness of our responsibilities to