Humanistic Teaching and the Place of Ethical and Religious Values in Higher Education 9781512814033

Citation preview

Humanistic Teaching and the Place of Ethical and Religious Values in Higher Education

Titles included in the Reports of

THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY Joseph H. Willits, Director Malcolm G. Preston, Co-Director Julia M. H. Carson, Assistant Director

T h e University of Pennsylvania Faculty: A Study in American Higher Education by Richard H. Shryock

Humanistic Teaching and the Place of Ethical and Religious Values in Higher Education by Edwin E. Aubrey

Graduate Study and Research in the Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania by Hayward Keniston

Humanistic Teaching and the Place of Ethical and Religious Values in Higher Education by E D W I N E. A U B R E Y

Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania Press

© 1959 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Published in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 58-13162

Since Dr. Aubrey completed this manuscript the morning of the day he died and since his death is felt as a keen loss to the University of Pennsylvania, this book is now issued as A Memorial Volume

Printed in the United States of America

Contents Part One HUMANISTIC

TEACHING

AT

PENNSYLVANIA

INTRODUCTION

9

1 . THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE HUMANITIES

13

2 . THE MEANING OF HUMANISTIC EDUCATION

23

3 . IMPEDIMENTS TO HUMANISTIC TEACHING

37

4 . PROPOSALS FOR IMPROVEMENT

53

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND REFERENCE NOTES

69

PART T W O

ETHICAL

AND

RELIGIOUS

VALUES

INTRODUCTION

73

1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

75

2 . THE PRESENT SITUATION

78

3 . THE PLACE OF ETHICS AND RELIGION IN THE CURRICULUM

85

4 . RECOMMENDATIONS

95

NOTES

99

PART ONE

Humanistic Teaching at Pennsylvania

Introduction The Director of the Educational Survey has requested me to "undertake a study to show how humanistic values and the humanistic spirit may be better served at Pennsylvania." The letter makes clear that this study is not intended to be a survey of the departments that usually fall under the Humanities. These are being examined elsewhere in the Survey. The closely related problem of "general education" is also the subject of a separate study by the Educational Policy Committee of the Educational Council. It is obvious that this study will overlap these other investigations at some points, and Dr. Willits has made it clear that I may reach over into these areas where it is necessary to deal with them as factors in the problem assigned to me. But his letter suggests the following lines of study: A statement of the meaning and objectives of humanism and humanistic teaching at Pennsylvania. The nature and place of ethical and religious values in education at Pennsylvania. A statement of the minimum achievements which humanistic values and humanistic teaching (in all departments) should achieve at Pennsylvania, and the minimum program for achieving them. A statement of the impediments to the full realization of the objectives at Pennsylvania. Proposal of specific steps that will make for the better realization of objectives.

9

In connection with the second item, he notes that student conduct in the areas of morals and religion will be studied by the Committee on Student Personnel; and allows me the choice of dealing with it in a separate memorandum. This I have chosen to do, and it appears as a Part Two of this report; though I want to stress my conviction that many of the values which I have treated in the first part of the memorandum have in themselves moral and religious significance, and that the effort to provide for ethical and religious values in the work of the Chaplain and in various student "activities" cannot be separated from the treatment of them in academic courses. In a word, the responsibility of the University in these areas cannot be relegated to extra-curricular activities. Anyone venturing to deal in a brief memorandum with the problem of humanistic teaching today is trapped at once. If he tries to set the problem in its general social perspective he may get bogged down in prolegomena; if he avoids the complexities of the social background he will belie the spirit of humanistic thinking by offering a narrow treatment devoid of perspective. If he ranges over the whole field of the humanities he will be accused of dilettantism and of being a poseur; if he restricts himself to some aspect with which he is familiar at first hand he will be charged with holding an inadequate view because of his specialism. He is embroiled at the very beginning in the controversy over the aim and scope of university education: Is it for the competent few who are to share in an intellectual aristocracy? This is branded as arrogance. Is it for everyman? This is philistinism. And what of the function of higher education? Is it to help students find their place in contemporary society? This is conformism. Is it to train up independent personalities who

10

can serve society as critics, or live worthily despite the follies and low standards of the time? This is highbrowism and social irresponsibility. As to the humanities, one can too easily become involved in endless debate over definitions from which he can escape only at the cost of being attacked for careless writing and vague use of terms. Many will challenge any philosophical implications he attaches to a list of values sought in the humanities; and, if he tries not to be too "theoretical," he will be attacked for truncating the process of education. Finally—though there are many other traps—if he offers criticisms he may easily become censorious, while if he tries to be descriptive he is thought innocuous. Only the brash will brave these dangers; and brashness is, in the academic community, the unforgivable sin.

11

1 The Present Situation of the Humanities Yet the very turbulence created by these winds of doctrine bears witness to the liveliness of the debate going forward at present about the meaning and purpose of education; and the place of the humanities in a university cannot be stated without reference to the controversy. It is not possible here to enter into the history of the controversy, but it should be noted that it is not, as some discussions seem to assume, a recent problem. As early as the twelfth century students were turning from the study of the established subjects of grammar and rhetoric to "science, medicine, law, logic and p h i l o s o p h y " a n d even earlier, Gregory of Tours complained in the sixth century that "the culture of liberal letters is declining." 2 Furthermore, there were many in the universities before 1500 whose interests were vocational rather than simply cultural, and who came not from the upper classes but from the families of "yeomen, retainers, and citizens" and were poor but clever boys seeking to gain by their wits some economic and social advancement into the professions.8 The tradition of humane (i. e. human, as distinct from divine) letters had never died out in the Middle Ages, but it was certainly given tremendous impetus by the fourteenthcentury recovery of ancient classical manuscripts. From then until the seventeenth century "the classics" held the field, but the age of discovery and the startling development 13

of early modern science were opening new fields to conquer, and men's eyes were turning from the past to the future. This is seen in Francis Bacon's plan for the advancement of learning, in which, though the ancients are profusely quoted, there is a new spirit of inquiry at work and they are used to justify a more empirical type of knowledge. But knowledge of the classics continued to be regarded as a mark of the educated man, and was often worn as an ornament, as eighteenth century literature and oratory well show. The term "classic" referred to works that conformed to the style of the ancient literature, and by 1820 came to be opposed to "romantic." 4 The emancipation which came with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, separating philosophy from theology, formulating the conceptions of tolerance and freedom into a clear policy, distinguishing history from tradition or legend and developing criteria of objective historical study, setting science on its own feet independent of theology and philosophy alike, gave to higher education a new intellectual setting. The tremendous efflorescence of knowledge demanded specialization as a condition of competence. The day of the combined humanist-jurist-theologian-scientist was gone. The integration of limited knowledge into comprehensive scholarship gave way to the specialism of modern research, sometimes reaching its unfortunate extreme in a man like the botanist who could not name the plants in the woods because he was a specialist in cytology. The service of science to the Industrial Revolution issued in such astonishing practical achievements, while division of labor produced such tremendous advances in pure science itself, that scholars in other fields took over the methods and became specialists themselves. The historian of modern Europe need not profess any knowledge of, or interest in,

14

American History. The critic of contemporary novels need not concern himself with Elizabethan poetry. The Old Testament scholars need not pay any attention to Christian ethics. Indeed, if the professor expected to be recognized as an authority in his own subject he had better not stray too far afield, because there was so much to master in the limited area to which he had dedicated his career. To know this strictly delimited field was sufficient justification of his work as a scholar or scientist. University education followed the trend, and departments subdivided and multiplied, and then were regrouped into "divisions." From these departmentalized areas the student might choose one or two courses to satisfy "requirements" in the division as part of his work for the degree at the college or university. To insure an adequate "spread" of his learning quantitative devices were invented in the form of credit hours, which were then totaled up to meet another quantitative standard for graduation. In the process, the humanities received an allocation which might constitute as little as one-fourth of the student's total program. (Indeed, in the free elective system at the height of its popularity, it was possible for an undergraduate to take no other course in the humanities than Freshman English!) But this was not all. The success of the natural sciences both in the academic world and in popular esteem established a vogue. Social studies now emulated their methods and outlook; and even many of the humanistic disciplines sought to be "objective" and to avoid "value judgments" in favor of facts. Appreciative or critical discussion of an author's insights gave way to biographical or historical data, in an effort to convince colleagues on the faculty that the course was solid. Because facts were firm and could be used by anyone, while opinions were subjective and spongy mate-

15

rial, the latter were considered déclassés, and courses whi:h dealt in them were thought soft. In this way the humanities were weakened both frcm without and from within, and academics began to complain about their plight. But such complaints were drowned oat by the clamor for useful knowledge and for direct relevant to immediately felt needs of American society in a technological age. Even research funds were devoted overwhelningly to natural scientific projects: of $3,500,000 used br research in the United States in 1953, 90% was allocated :o work in the natural sciences, while the social sciences and the humanities received 10%.8 Some scientists complained that much of this vast sum was employed not for pure science but for technological experimentation. The problem was aggravated by trends in the general American scene. Increasing prosperity put higher education within the reach of more prospective students, regardless of their intellectual eagerness. Two wars to save democracy led to demands for democratization of education at the higher levels. The competitive race among the world powers for industrial and commercial pre-eminence led to emphasis on technological ability. The development of big business gave rise to stress on efficient organization and led to thé increase of the managerial staffs of universities, while the voice of the businessman was often (though not always) raised on the side of utility and conformity. Alumni trustees were added to the boards, and usually for their affluence rather than from their intelligence about the educational processes of a university. The demand for "results" tended to affirm the quantitative and utilitarian aspects of education. When we add to these forces the enormous growth of urban colleges and universities with their hordes of commuters, for whom the day's intellectual activities were only 16

a part of a larger diurnal round of family life or gainful employment, the difficulty of maintaining reflective habits essential to humanistic education was accentuated. But this rather pessimistic picture needs to be balanced by acknowledgment of encouraging aspects of the present situation. There seems to be a growing sense that science is not enough, that its very success may be a curse as well as a blessing. This is not said in belittlement of the work of the scientists, but in an anxious query about the possible prostitution of scientific knowledge to diabolical ends. The Nazis showed in their concentration camps and torture chambers that science can enormously enhance evil when used without conscience. The atom and hydrogen bombs have become the occasion of an uneasy conscience among physicists about the responsibility of the scientist for the effects of the knowledge he disseminates; and this in turn has led many to re-examine the morality of means and ends. The earlier assumption, which had done yeoman service for two centuries, that ignorance is man's greatest enemy and that more education is the cure-all, has come in for new scrutiny. Not that education is decried—the popular shouts about the "eggheads" can be interpreted as the acknowledgment of fear of its power—but that the question of values in life is being debated. When modern man begins to ask what is the good life he is looking beyond his technological nose. This can be seen in two contemporary movements, both of them subject to varying interpretations: the existentialist philosophy, and the so-called "return to religion." In the former there is a strenuous effort to understand man himself, the dimensions of his existence, and his meaning in those frames of reference. While to the logical positivist the questions put are probably meaningless, the existentialist 17

applies his own analysis of meaning in the attempt to establish the bases of his dependence upon, and his independence of, the physical world and society. Whatever the merits of his answers, the very formulation of the questions points to a sense of dissatisfaction with the detached and objective mood of contemporary intellectualism. And while much of the religious reading which has shown such a marked increase in the last few years is undertaken to secure an often specious "peace of mind," and while the striking rise in church attendance and membership often reflects little more than conformity to a popular pattern of behavior, they bear witness to a feeling that some deeper foundation for living is required than the satisfaction of physical wants and a shallow sociability. A search is on for what used to be called "abiding values," and this lends a new significance to the humanities. As the revolutionary character of our age becomes clearer there is a growing concern about the fundamental assumptions on which our thinking proceeds. The sharpness of the conflicts over freedom and national security betokens more than political exploitation by demagogues. They would have nothing to exploit were there not already anxiety and a sense of frustration abroad among the American people. The alternative to hysteria in this situation is disciplined thinking, which understands how values arise in experience, what values have proved themselves in the human struggles of the past, and how they can be redefined in the present scene. But this is the story of culture, and a grasp of it enables the individual to look with critical discrimination at his own society, and to shape a larger and a firmer perspective for himself. Here again we are brought into the humanistic disciplines. 18

Some dim awareness of the need for a wider perspective on the problems of the current social order, some feeling of need for deeper understanding of what man really is and what he wants of life, seems to he behind the proposals for business and professional training to include some liberal arts education. The danger is, of course, that the subjectmatter of the humanities may be embraced and the humanistic spirit rejected at one and the same time. The habit of utilitarian thinking is not easily overcome. To do so requires the difficult discipline of letting the writer or the artist put his own questions to us, rather than insisting that he deal with the questions we have brought. The humanities cannot be forced into servitude to the impatient utilitarian; their freedom is the condition of their judicial function among the values on which they are to pass judgment. Closely related to this is the concern for form. Amid the welter of experience the individual becomes confused unless he can detect some order, some structure, some continuity of process. He tries to classify and generalize. In a word, he abstracts from the multitude of facts or from the vague totality of the situation some identifiable relations, some structures, which enable him to cope with his world. He draws on past experience to furnish guides, and looks for the dependable in the recurrent. The concrete data are subordinated to these abstract forms in order to be understood afresh. Abstractionism in art tries to recover one or another component of (say) painting—line or color or chiaroscuro— as the clue to esthetic meaning; and yet the very objections to such abstract art are often based on the demand for form as the organization of these components in some unity. The hearer of music may listen with an ear cocked for the recurrence of the dominant theme in different tempos or at 19

different pitches, or in a rhythmic pattern repeated with different notes. There is a synthesis here which is not the overall unity, but the subordinate unity of special components. This is not unlike the work of the specialized historian who looks for the economic or the political or the philosophical factors which offer a continuum within the larger framework of human development. But it is still a search for form and continuity. Or he may seek the total pattern of a limited period like the Napoleonic era, including in his work all the forces operating upon it. Unless he can offer something more than a catalogue of facts his task is not completed, for we expect from him some interpretation which illuminates the structure or the process. We should not expect of him that he should point to "lessons of history" that we can put to immediate use, but only that he should through his research throw light on why some people in the past did what they did. But this is in itself an enrichment of our understanding of human nature, and a humanistic contribution. We may take encouragement also from the attitudes of students themselves. In the first place, they are young. They are at the stage where they are trying as adolescents to "find" themselves. They have, therefore, an eagerness to know what life is all about, and what are the conditions of "success." They undergo disappointment, frustration and downright failure. They have moments of deep satisfaction and spurts of genuine achievement. They approach the professor as one who has some secrets of understanding which they want to have him share with them. It is easy for the cynical teacher to overlook all this, and to form his own stereotype of driving "a flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked." But the thirst is there, and the hope.

20

This hope is often disappointed, and the students know it. Many of them have criticized professors for lack of interest in the exciting possibilities of the course. They want more challenging teaching, and more exacting assignments which give scope to their powers. Occasionally they burst into print in the campus papers with shrewd observations on the intellectual deficiencies of the program of instruction; and they have shown, in their responses on the appraisal forms distributed for the purpose of eliciting their judgment of course instruction, a penetrating judgment of good and bad teaching. The negative criticisms cannot be dismissed as "griping" for they display a serious regard for fruitful education. This too is an asset. Furthermore, college students are at an age and in a situation where they are asserting personal independence of parental control, yet feel insecure in the new freedom. They are just now growing in self-direction, and this demands that some new standards be developed. This presents a special opportunity to the educator. Here is a group receptive to the very values with which humanistic teaching is concerned. And most of these young people have not yet acquired the veneer of polite evasion and dissimulation. They have not yet developed a vested interest in any particular pattern of personality, for they have not yet achieved one; and so they expose their difficulties and their felt weaknesses more frankly and with a refreshing sense of humor. Selfdoubt is still a dominant trait, and this opens them to the consideration of qualities of personal life different from their own in a way that may never happen again. They may fumble about in emulation of a revered teacher or an older student, but at least the search is on; and good humanistic teaching at this stage can pay dividends of incalculable value

21

for their whole lives. This is what renders undergraduate teaching exciting and terrifyingly responsible. There is, then, room for encouragement in the effort of humanistic teaching to cultivate the humane virtues and attitudes.

22

2 The Meaning of Humanistic Education Let us now look more closely at the term "humanistic." In current educational discussion it is closely allied with such terms as "general education," "liberal education" or "the field of the humanities." The first of these is used in contrast with specialization, and refers to the broad base which any educated person should have for the particular subject or field in which he proposes to do his special study. The problem of General Education at the University is being handled by others, and its relations both to the humanities and to professional training will doubtless be examined elsewhere in more detail. Strictly speaking, the task of the university as such is always that of discovering knowledge in special fields, of perfecting methods for further discovery in the fields, and of clarifying the problems which require attention. This presupposes general knowledge, either in the special field or in human intellectual achievement more broadly considered, and this is defined as the task of general education. Regardless of the student's special area of advanced study, such general intelligence constitutes a preparatory stage; both to enable him to decide where his abilities and interests lie, and to furnish perspective through consideration of his special discipline in its relation to human thought as a whole. The discussion of general education is often carried on, unfortunately, as though it were a terminal point for those who

23

might not go on to special studies. But no one stops at this point. All are required to decide on some vocation to which they will give their special attention, so that general education is always preliminary and never a goal. In relation to the process of general education humanistic education occupies a central place, since it is concerned with the modes of human experience and thought, and tries to protect the student from falling into the fallacy of excluding from his purview those modes which are not immediately germane to his special discipline, and thus becoming too restricted and traditional in his approach to his special subject-matter. Furthermore, since every specialist is also a human being, humanistic education has its place in his life to the extent that it enlarges his sensitivities and his enjoyments. In this sense it is of general value to all men. The phrase "liberal education" has a longer history, but issues in something closely akin to general education. Originally referring to the education of freemen—later of gentlefolk—as opposed to those engaged in the "servile" and trade occupations, the term had clear connotations in the Middle Ages when the seven liberal arts were distinguished from professional training in theology, law or medicine. To the literary studies of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic were added arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music; but many of these reached out into areas which we should now include under other names. (It is interesting to note that, according to the statistics of the University of Leipzig, only 20% to 40% of the students proceeded to the B.A. degree, in the period from 1427 to 1512).6 The distinction between liberal education and vocational training has persisted to our own time, and constitutes one of the issues in hot debate today. In this distinction the role of liberal education is to dis-

24

cipline and enlighten the mind. As Woodrow Wilson put it in his address to the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa: "The object of the college is to liberalize and moralize; the object of the professional school is to train the powers to a special task." And he went on: The educated man is to be discovered by his point of view, by the temper of his mind, by his attitude towards life and his fair way of thinking. He can see, he can discriminate, he can combine ideas and see whither they lead; he has insight and comprehension. His mind is a practised instrument of appreciation. He is more apt to contribute light than heat to a discussion, and will oftener than another show the power of uniting the elements of a difficult subject in a whole view; he has the knowledge of the world which no one can have who knows only his own generation or only his own task.7

This could certainly be accepted as a statement of the aims of the humanities, but it is not limited to them. Science can be taught in this same spirit, and if so it is humanistic. But, on this definition of liberal education the place of the humanities in the curriculum is incontrovertible. Yet the quotation points to an important distinction: that between "the humanities" and humanistic teaching. The former is a body of subject-matter, the latter is a spirit of teaching, an attitude towards the subject-matter being taught and towards the student. There is nothing sentimental about this. The attitude involved includes a rigorous discipline, an ascetic resistance to any temptations that would distort truth. It would insist on excellence, which a recent writer in the Bulletin of the A.A.U.P.8 defended as the true highbrowism. "I mean," he said, "a devotion to that high truth even though the truth be difficult, unpopular, unprofitable, unconsoling, unflattering, and entirely out of accord with dominant prej-

25

udices." Such teaching would demand honesty in reporting conclusions or in admitting that one could not reach them, as it would frankly acknowledge the assumptions that lay behind one's treatment of the subject-matter. It would work for precision of statement, meaning by this not merely the exact formulations of the scientist but also the choice of the right word to express one's meaning. In this sense the poet strives for precision as well as to provoke a mood. Precision of statement is therefore closely allied to clarity of expression. It is doubtful if any device of rhetoric will enable the student who has not thought with precision to attain clarity of writing and speech. But the student must also be able to use the language with economy and force, and to select from an adequate arsenal of synonyms the word that best conveys the exact meaning intended. This does not deny the validity of experiences which do not lend themselves readily to exact statement; but neither does it condone the escape from responsible communication into deliberate vagueness of language. Even in conveying a mood there is a best use of language which suggests that mood more effectively than other words could do. Where students engage in ambiguities in order to avoid a straightforward answer to a question the issue of intellectual morality has already arisen, for this is a form of deception employed with the hope of taking refuge in the alternative interpretation when the teacher marks the answer wrong. The student should be educated to think of relations: the relations of an event to its historical background; the relation of a statement to its implications or to its presuppositions, so that it can be logically examined; the relations of facts to each other in the creation of a structure of knowledge, transforming raw data into understanding; the relation of new ideas to established knowledge so as to test them

26

or to modify one's preconceptions. Such relational thinking is a rigorous discipline and needs to be insisted upon if the student is really to become an educated person. The power to suspend judgment when an answer is felt to be urgent calls for the exercise of patience (which after all means suffering). When the desire for security is dominant, the temptation to find a ready answer must be resisted. Against this it may be argued that we do not live by suspending judgment, but by exercising faith; but where faith is defined as "what you propose to do in the face of your ignorance" it is still no substitute for knowledge and no excuse for resting in ignorance. That way lies obscurantism. Indeed the very exercise of faith is directed towards fuller knowledge: Credo ut intelligam. Humanistic teaching, then, has its disciplines of thought and feeling. It is not the refuge of the sentimental. The humanist is not concerned simply with knowledge, however, but with wisdom. And this requires both an awareness of the limits of our established knowledge, with concomitant humility, and a recognition that thought is not possible without sensitivity. It is therefore a function of education to cultivate sensitivity—sensitivity which is broadened and deepened by entering sympathetically into the experience of all kinds of men. Hence the enormous opportunities in teaching literature and the arts. Here is The Summing Up by Maugham, and that other summing up in Saint Augustine's Confessions. Or the student can be introduced to the fear of Pascal before the new dimensions of nature which seventeenth century science was exposing, not too unlike our own terror before the atomic furies. Here are hope and courage, dread and despair; sophisticated enjoyments and simple pleasures; ecstatic enthusiasm and cool cynicism, doubt and aspiration; heroic devotion in love and virulent 27

hate. The gamut of human attitudes and reactions is spread out for examination. Here, too, is broad, sweeping synthesis and penetrating analysis; and flights of imagination as well as cautious appraisal. All of these are part of the balanced understanding of man, and belong in the education of a truly humane mind. The student will also encounter delicate nuances of human experience which do not lend themselves readily to his convenient categories. They are often suggested by myth and metaphor rather than explicitly described, or conveyed better by music or the texture of a sculpture than by words. Can he depart from his characteristic verbalizing habit long enough to listen or to look and thus to understand? In the process the student may well discover that what he felt and dared not say has been spoken by others, and he need not feel so lonely ever again. Or his philistine assurance that "poetry is bunk" may be caught unawares by some eloquent expression of his own mood finding new force in the rhythmic use of English speech, or the telling imagery. Thereby he may find himself as a member of the human race or be led to look again at his own life with a more critical and discerning eye. Perhaps he may achieve emancipation from the vapid uniformity of his crowd and discover what it is to be an individual. Brought face to face with greatness summoned out of the past, he may be challenged to rise to the possibilities of authentic human character. The more so when he finds that all great men have foibles but manage to rise above them. When the teacher is engaged in such material, he need not be pompously sententious: he can trust the material to make its own impact if a guiding remark is made here and there. The acquaintance with modes of human experience that seem strange to him will, if one has disciplined himself to

28

listen carefully even when he is repelled by them, engender a tolerance and tact based on respect for the individuality of another man. This need not undercut his own sense of values or his own obligation to live by them, but it will serve as a constant reminder of the genuineness of attitudes that he cannot share; so that for all the earnestness of his own conviction he will not become a prig. Close to this will be the sense of humor that can view his own enthusiasms and pronouncements from an alien perspective, so that he will not confuse the pop of his own particular gun with the crack of doom.9 In the same way he will be able to view the prevalent complaints or fashions of his own day in the light of comparison with other periods and other cultures. The American way will not be identified with God's way, nor the latest cry with ultimate truth. This will also mean that our national preoccupation with utility will be tempered with recognition of the value of intellectual curiosity and esthetic enjoyment for its own sake. In the midst of the hustle the reflective man will then be able to keep his poise, and in the whirling cage of modernity he will retain historical perspective. The shouts of popular praise will be met by demands that a deeper competence be shown. The much-touted triumphs of technology will be examined in the light of a richer intellectual and spiritual meaning for human life. The responsibility of a university does not, however, stop with the cultivation of an intelligent and sensitive mind. Since intellectual training may be used for evil as well as good ends, college education may compound the evils in society. The intelligent man can exploit his fellow-men more thoroughly, evade the law more cleverly, distort the truth in more insidious propaganda, conceal embezzlements more completely, and more nearly approach the perfect crime.

29

Nor is there anything in intellectual rigor or esthetic feelings of themselves to prevent the individual from falling into selfishness, intolerance, cowardice or deception. Yet precisely where in the academic training the moral values are to be inculcated is difficult to say. Precept is here less effective than example, and the classroom than the playing field and the fraternity house. But to ignore the whole area of moral and spiritual values is indefensible in any plan of education that pretends to be humanistic. The student should at least gain a more adequate understanding of what the race has called morals and religion, if only as part of the realm of social history; and a grasp of the way in which ethical and religious values are identified and discriminated and woven into personal life is certainly as important a part of the disciplined mind as the other methodological training referred to. I shall, in accordance with my mandate, return to this problem in Part Two. When we turn to the third of the cognate terms, "the humanities," we must again draw a distinction between teaching the humanities and humanistic teaching. Unfortunately, the subjects that fall under the name of "humanities" are often taught without regard for humanistic values. The statement offered above of the aims of humanistic teaching may help us to clarify this distinction. But, first, let us look at the word "humanities" itself. What Francis Bacon called "humanitie" was a branch of philosophy dealing with man, as contrasted with divine philosophy (or natural theology) and natural philosophy (or the natural sciences). This branch of learning, human philosophy, was to treat of man as "segregate" and "congregate," and he devoted to it almost half of the work on The Advancement of Learning. But as one reads Bacon's dissertation one realizes that the division is now outmoded. The modern

30

studies of man embrace his relations to the physical and biological as well as the social conditions of his life. Man and human affairs can be separated neither from nature nor from God. The proliferation of such studies constitutes, as we have said before, one of the problems of the status of the humanities today. The meaning of human life now reaches out into the natural sciences and the social studies. This accounts for the apparent anomaly that "the humanities" now refer mainly to the arts and literature. In the Bulletin of the College, History, Philosophy and Religious Thought appear under the "Social Sciences"; while Psychology is listed as a biological science. If one were to seek an enumeration of the subjects in the present-day college that deal with man "segregate and congregate" it would cut across divisional boundaries and embrace such diverse subjects as American Civilization and Microbiology, Classical Studies and Economics, Linguistics and Vertebrate Evolution. On the other hand, much of the material covered by the term "humanities" is not handled with humanistic concern. In this sense "humanistic teaching" is not limited to "the humanities," nor is teaching in the humanities necessarily humanistic. We can define humanistic education in terms of subject-matter or by reference to the spirit and aims of the instruction. The aims we have already suggested above. These aims are often lost to sight in the preoccupation with chronological data about great writers or analysis of rhyme pattern or lists of publications of a given author. We must not decry the value of such information as an aid to the study of great literary works; but it is a means to the better understanding of the writer as a revealer of human experience. The place of form in the expression of human thought and emotion is an important humanistic concern, 31

and the difference between the poetry of Pope and that of Shelley as to form is in itself a clue to difference of outlook, just as current debates over how intelligible poetry must be reflect conditions in contemporary culture. Conversely, how shall the teacher discuss the "stream of consciousness" literature without a knowledge of depth psychology? Study of any subject continually moves from the immediate matter under consideration out to its context, and back again from the general to the particular. The teacher's dilemma is how to avoid, on the one hand, the dilution of an intensive analysis by extensive treatment of the context, and, on the other hand, the loss of perspective in intensive examination. But this alternation is itself a natural part of thinking, and training in disciplined balance of precise understanding of particular data with the utilization of general principles is perhaps the central aim of education. 10 But there is another discipline involved in the teaching of arts and letters. It is the ability to enter empathetically into the feeling and spirit of the artist or writer. Here lies the risk of sentimentality in teaching unless the teacher is also able to lead his students out again from the immersion in the experience of the creative artist to the objective world. In face of this danger many scholars will approve as academically sound a course in history of art, 11 while they look askance at one in art appreciation,—as though the two could be separated! There seems to be here a confusion of two kinds of objectivity. The first is that found in the natural sciences where the data can be handled without regard to their own subjective reactions. The second appears where the data are human reactions themselves. In this latter case it becomes necessary to get behind overt behavior to the attitudes which it expresses, if we are to understand the overt acts 32

themselves. Admittedly, this is risky business; and the psychologist rightly warns us against the psychological fallacy of reading into another's acts the meanings they would express if we ourselves were performing them. The alternative is to infer several possible meanings, and then to test them against the other behavior of the individual till we find a meaning that best comports with the general pattern of his responses. Now, this general pattern is what we also refer to as "the spirit of the man." But since all expression is, as the word suggests, a movement from within outwards, it becomes incumbent on the interpreter to try to identify himself with this movement by getting "inside" the mind of the artist or writer, and then seeking to understand what he is trying to express. The approach is sometimes wrongly called subjective, and thereupon condemned. It would be a subjectivistic interpretation only if the observer or reader were to identify the other personality with his own. That this does occur no one can deny, and the artist and the poet will protest against this distortion of his own personality. Their demand is that the reader or observer should try to put himself in their place, emancipating himself from the limits of his own subjectivity. And this freedom from the interpreter's subjectivity is itself a discipline in objectivity. No doubt the selfcenteredness of every man makes this discipline difficult, and the preoccupation with some preconceived scheme of interpretation may well blind him to the reality of experiences that he has not himself undergone. But this only points to the severity of the discipline demanded of the teacher of literature or art or religion. To bring his students under that discipline is not only an educational achievement but it is fraught with moral significance, for it is the recognition of the individuality of another. On this rests any counsel of

33

tolerance, and it is the precondition of helping anyone else. It is also the clue to the meaning of responsibility, which is always an individual matter—even for those involved in corporate responsibility. But we are here at the heart of the teaching of the humanities. Here it is that imagination and insight and humane feeling come into play. Without them, it is difficult to see how the teacher can discharge his humanistic responsibility. It is not limited to arts and letters as these are generally understood, but also appears wherever human acts are the object of inquiry. So it becomes a part of the teaching of philosophy and religion and social studies as well. Now, any study of human behavior involves the consideration of values. Contemporary academic convention favors a detached attitude toward values, in the attempt to avoid indoctrination; and the teacher will sometimes interpret this to mean that he must not express any value judgments of his own. Actually, he is employing value judgments all the time: in his insistence on "sound" scholarship, in his disciplinary measures for dealing with plagiarism, in the very selection of what he regards as the important matters to be included in the course, etc. And even a resolute detachment is itself a value judgment. The problem is usually defined, however, in terms of not imposing his own opinions on the class, and refusing to "do their thinking for them." In this last sense, it seems to me to be good education. This is not the same thing as indifference to values as such. Where the teacher manifests an indifference to values, it is difficult to see how the teaching can be humanistic, for (in at least one respectable philosophic definition of value) values are meaningsfor-men, and without such meanings education loses its humane quality. Values appear in any course as part of the subject-matter

34

and also as part of the method of the discipline. Obviously, some subjects deal more directly with human values than do others. A course in chemistry in quantitative analysis is not concerned with values except in the mathematical quantitative sense, but the method of the course, with its emphasis on accuracy of measurement, stresses an important item in human search for knowledge. Similarly, the recognition of the limits of our knowledge in science, and possibly the limits of scientific method itself in dealing with some kinds of data, carries very definite value for the intellectual outlook and attitude of the student. At the boundaries of science there are still mysteries, and in the history of science some mysteries have been resolved at the cost of introducing other mysteries: devils in the polluted water give way to typhoid bacilli, but the field of bacteriology presents in turn its own mysteries. When this awareness of the unknown takes its place in the mind of the student a humility appears which is one of the ingredients of the cultivated person. Teaching which engenders this awareness is humanistic teaching. The exigencies of academic organization seem to force a decision as to whether history is to be listed among the humanities. I do not think the question is important. History can be taught in non-humanistic fashion; with a catalogue of dates to be memorized or with such limited treatment that the social context is never developed and the continuity with earlier and later periods never appreciated. But the sense of continuity and the habit of seeing any period (including one's own) as only a stage in a long development can help the student to acquire a serenity and a perspective that will steady him, even when he faces the acute problems of his own time. In addition, it is possible for the historian to deal with a given historic figure (Plato or Hannibal or

35

Luther or Lincoln) in such a way as to help his students to learn how a great man rests on the past and shapes the future. From this can come a deeper understanding of human nature. In brief, humanistic teaching can extend far beyond the humanities. I have now attempted to make clear what I mean by humanistic education. It shares with general education an effort to provide a broad base for any more specialized education—whether in professional training or in a particular department of the humanities—and hopes to cultivate perspectives and attitudes that will be fruitful for thinking in any special area as well as for the whole man. Its common ground with liberal education is its interest in those qualities of life that help to make the cultured person and the free mind. It finds special promise in the humanities, but only if they are humanistically taught. A university, I have said, cannot neglect the values of such humanism and still discharge its proper obligation to society. It is now incumbent upon us to scrutinize our own program at the University of Pennsylvania, and to state as clearly as possible the impediments that exist here to the realization of the values I have set forth. Some of these arise from the students themselves, some from the character of the institution and the organization of its curriculum, and some from administrative policies and the educational atmosphere they help to create.

36

3 Impediments to Humanistic Teaching Recent British discussion of higher education has given rise to a distinction between the ancient universities and the "red brick" universities of newer vintage. The provocative book by the pseudonymous Bruce Trucot, Red Brick University (1943), and Sir Walter Moberly's The Crisis in the University (1949) 13 expose these differences. It would seem that the University of Pennsylvania belongs somewhere between the two. Here is a university that by American standards is "ancient," and that arose within the framework of the older English tradition. Yet, by contrast with other "Ivy League" institutions, it was founded, not for the training of "a learned ministry" but for the education of leadership for the province. Located in a commercial city—and an increasingly industrial one—it has taken on many of the characteristics of a Red Brick university: the metropolitan environment, the large proportion of students commuting daily for classes and returning to their own homes, the consequent ambivalence between the atmosphere of learning and the demands and attractions of life at home, the loss of the advantages of constant residence in a college, the dispersion of the faculty homes in suburbs or other towns, with the consequent lack of that friendly contact which comes from being able to "drop in" on a faculty member in his home environment to enjoy the quiet talk by the fireside, the intrusion of the impersonal attitude of urban life. These 37

are problems that must be dealt with elsewhere in the Educational Survey, but they have serious effects on the kind of education which we associate with the college town, the "halls" of Oxford or Cambridge, the tutorial system, the "community of scholars and learners." While there can be much sentimentality in the praise of college residence, and much debasement of the intellectual life in campus friendships, they do make possible a continuous and more concentrated experience of the life of learning. Where the mores of the campus support superior scholarship an atmosphere is produced in which mental alertness, thirst for knowledge, independent thinking, mutual criticism and creative intelligence are reinforced by social approval. Even the boy or girl who comes from a home where the intellectual life is neither prized nor understood finds a new home where he is nurtured, so that he can rise beyond his limited background. But this is much handicapped when he returns each day to his family to find them amused by, or suspicious of, his intellectual pursuits, and demanding of his time when he wants to get away to study and reflect. "There he is, just sitting there, thinking!" The academic mood cannot be sustained. The ivory tower is needed, where the individual can find himself, relieved of the pressures of society. But most students bring with them a mind set towards the values by which society sets great store: a well-paying job, social status, the popularity that is the reward of conformity, passive enjoyment of others' creative efforts. It is little wonder that the professor—poorly paid, held in low esteem or even ridicule, odd in his nonconformity, engrossed in research which pays no obvious dividends—seems to them a sort of ticket-seller who will give them admission to the reserved seats in the grandstand. If they can slip by without 38

paying the price, that is just another indication of their cleverness. The low level of competence in those skills and subjects which they have gained in secondary education prevents them from moving into the real achievements and enjoyments which the university opens to them. But this point has been labored ad nauseam in current discussion. Yet there are also students with minds that sparkle and laugh, with intellectual sinews that like being stretched in vigorous exercise, with delicacy of perception that often shocks the jaded senses of the professor, with a forthright honesty that cuts through the evasions in classroom teaching, with a freshness of approach that is like a keen wind in the academic marshes. The tragedy is that these are so often discouraged and brought low by the overwhelming pressures, inside the classroom and out, of the rest. Some of them, if they survive, become the brilliant majors in the departments of their choice, the creative leaders in campus life, the irrepressible critics of academic incompetence. Student rosters outside their major fields are too often diffuse and ill-planned. This is in part due to lack of concern about the general education of the first two years, which is in turn due to preoccupation with the special vocational education represented by the major field. Courses are not chosen with a view to securing a well-balanced background in humanistic studies; but to meet distribution requirements stated in the catalogue. In the process, of course, some breadth is assured by those requirements themselves; but, as we said above, it is often possible to select from the courses a list which still represents an inadequate acquaintance with the humanities. On the other hand, since some of the humanities are, in the College Bulletin, listed under Social Sciences (2.b.), the distribution may include more humani-

39

ties than would appear in a statistical calculation. Part of the responsibility for ill-chosen programs of study in the first two years lies with advisers who, for one reason or another, do not use the advisory relationships to impress upon the student the importance of a well-distributed course of study in this area. The humanistic values in education are also threatened by the quantitative approach and the consequent concern for grades. The demands of students to know what percentage of the final grade in a course is to be allocated to the various tests and papers, and the fact that students will come to the instructor's office to argue grades rather than issues of the course, both reflect this attitude. Values tend to be seen in relation to grade-point averages and semester credits as part of the calculation of the final quantitative requirements for graduation. This is accentuated by the organization of the curriculum itself, and by the need to handle a large student body in an efficient and uniform manner. The pace is set by the goal of 126 semester credits in academic subjects for graduation. Concentration on a few lines of thought and study is discouraged by the faculty legislation which permits a student to take as many as six courses simultaneously. While this requires a certain nimbleness of mind, sometimes involving a change of attitude from one classroom to another, it is not conducive to reflection on the material encountered in the courses. Further, the habit of registering for courses in terms of a convenient roster, rather than from any examination of the course descriptions in the Bulletin, is often betrayed by the puzzlement of students when they receive a syllabus of a course and discover that it deals with subject matter quite different from what the course number alone had led them to think. I suspect that every faculty member has at one time

40

or another been confronted by a student who knew the number of a course for which he wanted to register but not its title. The piling up of courses in this way is permitted, so that there is little coordination of the student's program into any logical whole till he comes under the supervision of his major department. Accordingly, the pious expectations expressed in the College Bulletin that the student will "acquire competence in the fundamental techniques of thinking and communication, and a broad acquaintance with the three great areas of academic study . . . (and) increase his ability to use his native language and develop his appreciation of its literature . . . intensify his awareness of the function of language as a means of expression, and . . . introduce him to the literature and culture of another people than his own" 14 is too infrequently realized. One wonders, indeed, how many students even know that this is the expectation of their teachers. And these expectations stated in the Bulletin seem only to refer to the "basic group" requirements. It is striking that no statement appears about what the student is expected to achieve in his "distributive group" studies. Though one hesitates to call attention to the fact lest it might fall under the eye of a student, it is possible at present for a student to graduate without any discipline in college in a physical science that requires laboratory experimentation, without any knowledge of psychology, without any sociology or political science, without any history or philosophy or religious thought, and without any acquaintance with classical studies or fine arts or music. It is hard to see how, on this basis, the student will really acquire a humanistic education as a basis for any specialization in his chosen field, unless he should choose one of the humanities for his major,

41

or unless the teaching in the subjects chosen were to introduce humanistic reference and value in the handling of the subject matter. But this last possibility is itself handicapped by the lack of contact between faculty members in the humanistic and scientific disciplines. It is to be hoped that the projected Faculty Club will make such contacts more feasible and natural, but the tradition of divisional and departmental separation which seems to have developed at the University, and the quite proper emphasis on research specialization which obtains here, both tend to restrict intercourse. This is not to say that there are not members of all divisions who have deep humanistic interests and concerns, but the ignorance of each others' fields inhibits such discussion; though here again the Research Club provides an opportunity for mutual enlightenment. Though there is permissive legislation by the facultv allowing departments to accept for the major program twelve semester credits in related courses, practice varies greatly among the departments in the extent to which these options are used to stress relations with humanistic subjects in other departments. 15 And among the scientists there is a tendency on the one hand, to deplore the subordination of pure science to technological utility, and on the other hand, to view with suspicion the intellectual quality of work in humanistic disciplines. (Though I mention this with diffidence it is interesting to note that of the departments mentioning related departments or courses by name, only one refers to Religious Thought, and that the Department of Astronomy!) It is true, however, that the student is allowed one-fourth of his time for free electives, though how wisely these are used is another question. The pressure of the demands of specialized training upon

42

the student, especially in pre-medical studies, works against the election of courses which are not calculated to equip him directly for the professional program. But there are signs that those responsible for professional training are reversing the trend towards narrow specialism, and urging a broader preparation lor professional work in law, medicine and engineering. 16 Theological schools have for many years advocated a broad humanistic and scientific training as the best background for graduate work in the field of religion. The pressure for specialization affects the faculty as well. Every faculty member of a university should be engaged in research: this has become an increasingly insistent demand. Professor Richard H. Shryock has reminded us 17 that universities with research faculties did not really take shape in this country till 1870 and later. Since then, however, the influence of the graduate schools with primarily research interests has been felt in the colleges—and not merely in the colleges of the same universities where the graduate research programs are being carried on. Controversies have arisen in these institutions, especially among the alumni of their colleges, about the subordination of college interests to graduate education. In those institutions where the same teachers offer instruction in both undergraduate and graduate schools a sharper conflict is engendered as to the primary claims on the professor's time. The assumption seems to be made that a professor deeply involved in research will tend to neglect his teaching responsibilities, and vice versa. This is a false assumption, for the creative researcher is often a brilliant teacher as well. But it is still true that the requirements of good teaching will often take up so much of the instructor's time in interviews, marking test papers (which cannot always satisfactorily be turned over to inexperienced graduate assistants,

43

and which need to be read by the teacher himself if he is to keep in contact with the students' performance), planning the individual hours of instruction for maximum effectiveness in lecturing or discussion, and devoting considerable energy to the process of securing the necessary intellectual participation of students in the classroom, that he may have little time or energy left for private research. The larger the classes the more difficult the problem. On the other hand there is a continual outcry against relegating students in elementary courses to inexperienced instructors. Poor instruction at this level may repel many promising students who might otherwise go on to a major in the department; while contact at the beginning with an outstanding scholar or scientist may be the source of a lifelong interest in the subject. Here is one dilemma. The other is that the good teacher, however excellent in his teaching, is apt to lose caste if he does not publish significant research. He may even sacrifice promotion. He may be treated as a good hack worker, but not as an ornament to the university. Since he has no important research in progress, it is difficult for him to secure leave of absence for research (the principal reason for granting such leave), so the problem is compounded. The pressure is such that many faculty members are tempted to publish trivial bits of so-called research so that they will keep up their end and be on record as having published. Thus a sort of cult of publishing research is built up, which is a distraction from both significant teaching and significant research activity. The whole concept of research is in need of re-examination. Much of it is no particular contribution to our knowledge, for it is of trivial importance in the first place, and in the second place it manifests no creative insight in interpretation of the problem or the data with which it deals.

44

Different types of research need to be recognized: some are discovery of hitherto concealed data in a familiar field (perhaps the letters or the diary of a well-known author which throw new light on his character not revealed in his books); some constitute a fresh approach to a problem which has become stereotyped in prevailing studies (such as a study of the medieval continuity of secular classical studies, which undercuts the conventional notions of the Renaissance as a sudden outburst of classical enthusiasm); some explore new directions in the study of a given subject, opening up new problems for investigation (like the possible influence of Hellenistic mystery cults on early Christianity); some are the application of new and more exact techniques to old problems (such as the use of delicate devices of electronic measurement in tracing brain lesions); some are imaginative constructs which are used as entirely new presuppositions for defining a problem (for instance, the use of mechanistic against earlier spiritistic theories in physiology). To be sure, not all research can be expected to be epochmaking, and many of the achievements of the great scholars and scientists rest upon the obscure labors of lesser lights; but there is in the academic world too much adulation of research for the sake of publication, without regard to the real merits of much that passes under that name. This is a problem of the survey of general distribution of the University's use of human and financial resources. Our concern with it here is two-fold: (1) the effects of specialized research on the general character of our humanistic teaching, and (2) the function of a university to transmit established knowledge as well as to make new discoveries. The dangers of preoccupation with research are that it may lead to impatience with undergraduates who are so far behind the frontiers of knowledge that the teacher has to

45

"go over old stuff"; the loss of contact with those in the initial stages of inquiry in the subject, so that the teacher "talks over their heads"; the temptation to talk of advanced problems in the field to the neglect of the rudiments of the subjects which the students need to master; and a supercilious attitude towards the class, amounting sometime to ridicule. There is also a danger that the intensive concentration of the research specialist may blind him to the wider outreach of his material, so that the connective tissue between his own and other fields is never considered. It is at this point that many of the humanistic values are lost. I repeat that these are not inevitable concomitants of research activity. On the contrary, many a student has been inspired by a teacher who opened up with enthusiasm the results and problems of his own advanced research, leading them, if only for a few minutes, into the excitement of learning and the discipline of careful and conscientious scholarship. Under such teaching the obvious can take on new dimensions of possibility for thought, the pat answer is checked by acknowledgment of ignorance, the dogmatic attitude is superseded by that of humble inquiry, the textbook statement becomes only the beginning of knowledge in the £eld. Yet many of us have also sat under great scholars wiose lectures were deadly dull, because they were badly delivered, there was no contact with what we knew of the subject, no vistas were opened up through the mass of tacts presented, and no interpretation was offered of the pib of data heaped upon us. It often seemed as if the professor had himself got lost and could not extricate himself. In a word, he simply could not communicate. He was to us ony a spectacle, and he made no contribution to our education. The task of a university, so long as it admits undergnduates, is not only to prosecute research, but also to transmit 46

accumulated knowledge and to train students in its critical use. Obviously, they cannot use such knowledge if they do not have it, and they cannot enter upon advanced study until they have acquired basic knowledge in the area. I have had students who were sure they could philosophize about religion, but who had no knowledge of the historical facts about religion. They glibly offered opinions which lacked any firm ground in knowledge. The same must surely be true in other departments, and this points to the need for transmitting well-authenticated information as a function of education. And no amount of methodological training can serve as substitute for sound information, and indeed cannot proceed without content in terms of which the methods are defined. It is not possible, then, to generalize about the effects of research activity on humanistic teaching. Some teachers are misfits whether in teaching or research. Some have the gift of communicating established knowledge in a stimulating fashion, but are not gifted in original research. Others are brilliant researchers but not skilled in communicating beyond the circle of specialists in their own field, for whom the technical shorthand of the specialty is already intelligible. Still others are both first-rate research men and skilled in presenting their subject to the non-specialist and imparting to him some of the excitement and kindling in him some of the discipline of study in the field. Such a teacher is usually able to see his own subject in its relations to other fields and to point to both similarities and differences between the kinds of knowledge gained. Those responsible for selecting teachers for undergraduate instruction within a university should constantly be on the lookout for men and women who combine research ability with a gift for teaching. But the problem goes farther back: to the graduate 47

schools. The immense diversity of graduate training means that the possession of a Ph.D. degree is not in itself a reliable guide. But even in graduate schools across the country which do not enjoy a very good reputation there is often a professor who trains top-flight men. And it is a truism to say all schools have varied careers with reference to particular departments, so that the leadership in these fields moves from one university to another as the years go by. The department head needs to know not merely his own departmental requirements, but also the general situation of graduate training in his discipline in the country at large. But in the graduate schools themselves there is a carelessness about training the research students for teaching responsibilities. Of course, many of them, especially in the scientific fields, will not go into teaching; but there are still many fields for which the milieu of future research will be a teaching position. For these more care must be taken to weed out those unfit for instructing students, and to provide more guidance for the promising teachers. Indifference to the personal qualities of the graduates, which sometimes passes for objectivity or broad tolerance of budding genius, is found too often; and the frustration of the incompetent teachers, as well as the disappointment of the employing institution, can often be laid at the door of graduate training. While the graduate school is not an eleemosynary institution, it still carries some responsibility for the personal as well as the technical training of its students so far as this relates to teaching. Bad training in either respect through carelessness in the handling of its students is a disservice to education, both in the graduate school itself and in the college to which its product is sent. The degree of restrictive specialization within the graduate school for doctoral work presents a more difficult prob-

48

lem. With the growth of a given field through the advances of knowledge of the subject, it may well seem that three or four years of graduate work is all too little, and that one can hope only to train the student in a limited portion of his special field. He is therefore soon forced to choose a special period of history or a particular subdivision of physiology or a single facet of philosophy, in which to do his doctoral research. This may be mitigated to some extent by the broader range of the qualifying examination (i.e. the "general" or "preliminary" examination), but too often this, like the language requirements, is regarded by the student as a hurdle rather than a foundation for further work. T h e result is that men are sent out to teach who are illiterate outside their own fields and uncultured in their general perceptions; and this can be said of many of the recipients of the doctor's degree even in the so-called humanistic fields. So long as this continues to be true, it is difficult to see how there can be much improvement of humanistic teaching. Finally, impediments to humanistic teaching arise from administrative policies. It is inevitable that, in response to public demands for the training of more scientists to meet the Russian challenge, the University should try to show that it is eager to make its maximum contribution to this cause. Public pronouncements to this effect, accompanied by the publicizing of any achievements in scientific research, have definite prestige value and may attract financial support. But a university has other intellectual responsibilities than the furtherance of scientific knowledge, and the longrange values of intellectual discipline and cultural leadership dare not be neglected. Yet we hear little said of the importance of the humanities as part of the University's contribution. It is not surprising, therefore, if faculty members teaching in these departments feel that they are some

49

sort of addendum to the scientific activities of the institution. T o boast of the "distinguished scholars in our midst" is no substitute for adequate support of their work, especially when the University is in danger of losing its distinction in these fields through loss of such scholars to other places. This is in part a problem of finances, but it is also a problem of faculty morale—and probably more so. The faculty man who feels that his labors are appreciated and that his support of the administration's educational program will be reciprocated is less likely to be over-concerned about financial emoluments. But where there is a feeling of being neglected, cynicism and withdrawal into one's own work will be the only alternative to open protest. When this occurs the sense of community with the rest of the university begins to break down, and with it the integrated operation of the educational system. But such a sense of integration is necessary to any plan of humanistic education, in which the areas of knowledge are being explored in their interrelations and in their contribution to common goals. T o many of us the continued delay in building library facilities suited to the needs of research (not to mention regular study) and of creative teaching symbolizes the problem. T h e staff has done what it could in a drab, dark and crowded building, with its own limited numbers. Desk space in the stacks is inadequate, shelves are poorly lighted, ventilation leaves much to be desired, the volumes sought are often shelved elsewhere in special seminar collections without duplicates being available. All of this tends to discourage the student who has been urged to do some independent work of his own on an assigned topic. The card index, already over-loading the space provided, lacks analytical classification in many subjects, so that the student has to devote a disproportionate amount of time to securing a

50

topical bibliography. The librarians have provided a very helpful guide to the use of the facilities, but its effectiveness is seriously hampered by the factors mentioned. And in the background is always the building itself as a forbidding place. Every educational institution tends to become inbred. From this result a self-satisfaction and correspondingly an attitude of resistance to change. The newcomer to the University is at once impressed with this, and with the familiar rationalization that experiments tried at other places have shown weaknesses and may therefore be ignored. The critic of its traditional patterns will then either be accused of lacking loyalty to the University or pride in its greatness, or else be dismissed as "disgruntled." Under such circumstances, radical reconsideration of its policies in the face of new problems becomes more difficult, vested interests become entrenched in the tradition, discussion of fresh proposals encounters emotional prejudices, and needed reforms die a-borning. Creative ideas are branded opportunistic: the University has outlived many such in its long history, and will survive many more. In such an atmosphere the sense of adventure in learning is apt to be dulled by an inherent conservatism. In the effort to overcome inertia, the university may resort to the tested methods and patterns of business organization. But there is an important difference between business corporations and universities, as President Eliot pointed out long ago: in a business the expert exists to serve the corporation, in a university the corporation exists to serve the experts. This may have been an easier distinction to make in Eliot's day than it is in our own, but the danger of an elaborate business structure in a university is partly the change of atmosphere it induces, and partly the subordination of 51

the teaching processes to demands for complicated paperwork of a business character by the professor, and the subtler tendency to regard faculty members as employees rather than as professional scholars to serve whom is the main function of the administrative staff.18 The change of atmosphere is from that of the study to that of the commercial office. And this is very often the antithesis of academic attitudes. The tests of effectiveness in education are simply not the same as those of a business deal or an industrial enterprise: and the attempt to make them such may actually destroy the humanistic values of which we have been speaking. For instance, any attempt to assess the value of a faculty member in terms of the number of student semester hours which constitute his "load" is either irrelevant or else a negative index. Who would dare to say that a class in which a professor teaches six students for two hours a week is less valuable educationally than one in which another professor lectures to eighty for three hours a week? On a quantitative basis, the latter is twenty times as "effective" as the former; but does this mean anything in terms of educational value? And in what sense is the small class a 'luxury" that a university cannot afford? Some will think that this statement of the impediments to humanisic teaching is too pessimistic or perhaps overdrawn, but the items to which we have called attention cannot be ignored in considering the prospects of humanism within the academic community.

52

4 Proposals for Improvement W e come at last to some suggestions for the improvement of humanistic teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. While it is possible to make some contributions to the solution of the problems indicated through reorganization of departments and administrative channels, the burden rests most heavily on the teachers themselves. The function of administrative systems in a university is to provide optimum conditions for research and teaching. In the scale of educational values it is the administrators and not the faculty who are "subordinates." This is more clearly recognized in British and Continental universities, where administrative functions are temporary responsibilities of the faculty themselves. (The rector of a German university is chosen for one year's service, and he does not limit his scientific or scholarly labors for long enough to lose his contact and ability in his own field of learning. In the ancient universities of England the executive head of the university is the head of one of its colleges serving for a term of three years at Oxford and for two at Cambridge.) The danger is that it may be forgotten in the growing complexity of American university administration, and the character of the university in its academic functions be changed. It is still the traffic in ideas and ideals among the faculty that determines the greatness of the institution. An old teacher of mine (and a shrewd administrator) used

53

to say, "The trouble with plans is folks.'" And no amount of external reorganization will guarantee improvement of teaching. The intelligent person is still able to circumvent regulations, or to teach well in spite of a poor curricular system. Faculty members cannot, then, take refuge from criticism of their teaching by pointing to administrative deficiencies or "the system." On the other hand, the problem cannot be solved by finding "personalities" for classroom teaching, and leaving the rest to them. The entertaining teacher may be a menace. Extraneous appeals through a good supply of stories, a friendly attitude to students when met on the campus, the use of startling devices for securing attention, exhibitionism in the classroom lecture, long hours of idle chatter with students in the office—these may vitiate the educational process. The teacher must be a dependable leader of student thinking, and dependability is not an exciting quality. Many of us can point with gratitude to the contribution made to our education by an unobtrusive, conscientious scholar who had a serenity and a quiet humor engendered by deep thought and broad learning. He had no tricks of teaching, but the earnestness with which he pursued the truth and the rigorous discipline which he exacted of us when we dealt with matters which he regarded as of the utmost importance, bred in us a respect and admiration which passed through him to learning itself. Like John the Baptist in the paintings, he was always pointing beyond himself. His friendship was reserved for those students who kindled to the possibilities of the subject and ventured out in their little boats on the high seas which he charted for them. He disdained adulating coteries, and found his satisfaction in those of his students who went beyond his own achievements in his field. Years later we have found our-

54

selves at some crucial point in our career asking of ourselves what he would have thought most important for us to do. He freed us, but he gave us at the moment of our emancipation new responsibilities to face. He might not be especially articulate in stating the personal faith by which he lived, but we knew that deep within him were principles that could not be shaken. And so he stimulated us to find our own foundations for steadiness of character. Shoddiness or superficiality in our work filled him with anger, or else he let drop some chance remark that sorrowfully told us that we had disappointed him. On some rare occasion he might admit us to the sanctum where his own frontier thinking was being done, and, though we were awed and a bit puzzled by what he showed us, we knew that for a moment we had had a glimpse of high intellectual adventure. There was in it a strange combination of austerity and passion: the imagination leaped along all sorts of paths canvassing the hypothetical possibilities or the implications of some bit of knowledge gained, but the task of examining these and weighing them for the modicum of truth that they contained was a long, tedious, painfully exacting drudgery. The test of the man was the fidelity with which he stayed with this task rather than announce as conclusions what were only guesses. The classroom lecture now took on a new meaning: it was the precious metal extracted from an immense amount of ore. He never paraded the process of mining and crushing and fusing and cupellation to elicit our esteem, but when a thoughtful query was raised by some student he would give some hint of these prodigious labors in a careful answer. Knowing the multitude of possibilities he had himself explored, he was not contemptuous of the student who had queried him, but seemed appreciative of an inquiring mind. He was greeting a fellow-learner.

55

Sometimes in the classroom we felt the pressure, almost the desperation, with which his learning struggled to accommodate itself to our simplicity. The hesitancy with which he phrased his statements seemed to be filled with split-second decisions among many alternative facts which crowded for recognition, or with a search for the qualifying word that would render the simplified answer safe. He was not an eloquent lecturer in the accepted sense, but there was a care and an integrity in his speech which put glibness to shame. With such a man successful teaching does not stem from a method nor is it particularly dependent on a scheme of academic organization. It arises from something intrinsic to the man himself: from his spirit and his character. Other teachers, other wells of strength. And the difficulty in assessing these men at the time of engaging them is that these qualities are not worn on the sleeve. It is easier to detect their absence: in the brittle wit or the ready superficiality of the unpremeditated answer to a question; in the solemn vacuity of a poorly stored mind; in the inability to see the implications of a remark; in the lack of a discriminating vocabulary. But since teaching is an affair of mutual understanding, and operates within the context of a situation shared by both teacher and student, the problem of improving humanistic education includes other matters than the selection of good teachers. First among these is the selection and guidance of the students themselves. Now that the colleges are faced with an increase of applicants beyond their resources to accommodate, it should be possible to enforce more rigorous standards of admission. In addition to the criteria now in force we should set a higher standard of ability of the candidate to express himself clearly with good English and spelling.

56

This might be tested by asking of him a one-page statement on what he expects to gain from a higher education, and on which subjects interest him most and why. The content of this statement would not be so important as his expression of it, though the sincerity of the student will often be gauged by what he says. It is easy for him to get help in formulating this statement, so that it is not genuinely his own; and this risk must be taken. If, however, it were taken in conjunction with the extemporaneous answers to the entrance questions set by the College Entrance Examination Board and his performance in the Scholastic Aptitude and Achievement tests, a clearer picture should emerge as to his ability to express himself. Some effort should also be made to secure more objective appraisal, from those in charge of his secondary education, of his intellectual interest and his personal maturity. More resort should be had to interviews by university staff members so that our own standards of appraisal can be applied here. This would be more costly at the initial stage, but it would save much time and effort of our personnel officers and advisers later on, as well as saving the incompetent and uninterested student from the ignominy of having failed in college. Once the applicant is accepted, he should be guided more carefully in his adjustments to college work. The advisers should be chosen with an eye to their humanistic outlook and their interest in the student as a person; and a limit of fifteen advisees should be set. It is impossible for any one adviser successfully to guide forty or fifty students at the same time. Larger funds should be assigned to this function. The advisers should be more carefully trained and supervised, and should be responsible for regular reports to the supervisor, especially on any serious difficulties encountered

57

by their charges. The advisers, with fewer students assigned to them, could meet regularly with them as individuals and as a group, to offer guidance. The Orientation Course for Freshmen, which now suffers from not carrying any credit and from the handicap of an unattractive lecture room, the arrangement of which makes hearing very difficult and discussion impossible, should be made to carry one semester of credit. Papers and tests could then be required, and these could be criticized and graded by the several advisers, each for his own advisees. The content of the course might be substantially as at present, but it would include training as well as information. This could be reinforced by the inclusion in English 102 and 103 (Freshman Composition) of essays on college education which were in themselves models of writing. These would serve to introduce the student to what experienced educators regard as the purpose of higher education and the values which it has to offer. (Perhaps there is some more recent equivalent of the volume of Essays for College Men by such writers as Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Meiklejohn, William James, Thomas Huxley and Matthew Arnold; but if not, these are still worth reading.) By such reading, the freshman could be stimulated to formulate his own ideas on the subject. The various departments might well, in addition to the present information regarding prerequisites and other course matters, furnish to the advisers statements of the qualities and abilities demanded for major work in their fields. The same could be done by representatives of the Distributive Groups to aid the advisers to interpret those areas. In such ways the advisory relationship might well be enriched beyond the rather perfunctory character which the present system and its heavy load encourages. In good relations be58

tween the adviser and his students there exists a primary opportunity to inculcate the humanistic values. All college catalogues suffer from being a combination of historical record, academic legislation and guide; but the Bulletin could make a larger contribution than it does to the cultivation of a humanistic education. First, it is necessary, however, for the advisers to train the students in the habit of using the Bulletin as a basis for the selection of courses, rather than relying solely on the mimeographed class schedule and the advice of other students. But the Bulletin should be revised to include a statement of the rationale of the Distributive Group, comparable to that furnished for the Basic Group. Such a statement would give another opportunity to stress the place of the humanities and of elementary scientific courses in the general education of the student. Much more could be done to give a sense of the interrelationships of the different fields by indicating under each department such courses in other departments as are related to its work. These need only be indicated by course number. The present practice of limiting course descriptions to topical notations about the content should be reconsidered, and the desirability of making some statement about the aims and method of the course seriously studied. The departments should undertake careful review of their several programs, and of their criteria for the selection of those responsible for undergraduate instruction. The first of these is already being broached by the Committee on Instruction of the College; and it is to be hoped that it will lead to diligent efforts to clarify the aims of departmental programs in relation to general education. To what extent, for instance, are the elementary courses in the department planned for the major in the field rather than for the general student? Should different sections be arranged for the

59

prospective specialists and for the non-specialists? And what differences would appear in the syllabi for such sections? Each department should be encouraged to develop a rational sequence of courses so as to indicate the progression of knowledge and skill in the subject. While the department itself must be the ultimate judge of such matters, there is no reason why an all-college committee should not make representations to it regarding the claims of general college objectives upon its program. Students would be helped if there were some clearer division of the offerings into elementary, intermediate and advanced courses, and some further advice regarding prerequisites in the same or other departments. If this were more uniformly done by departments, along with the revision of course descriptions suggested above, there would be fewer cases of students straying into courses for which they were not equipped. Departments might also give more attention to methods of teaching and to the guidance of their apprentice teachers. Much more could be done, in joint planning of the syllabi and the tests by experienced teachers and novitiates, to call attention to the humanistic values in the material, to make the assignments more creative, and to see that students grasped the method of inquiry in the field. In the process the young instructor would benefit by the experience of skilled teachers among his superiors, and the latter might well profit from the critical queries of the younger men in getting out of ruts developed over the years. The dangers of departmental inbreeding would be mitigated where new personnel with different training had a chance to propose different methods of organizing the material and eliciting from the students more discriminating and independent judgment. In the search for teachers better fitted to exploit the hu-

60

manistic values of the subject, departments might consider the following criteria: 1. What is the degree of his competence in his special area, in relation to his age? 2. Does he see his own specialty in the perspective of the whole departmental field? 3. Is he aware of the humanistic values in the discipline, and is he interested in them? 4. Can he convey his knowledge of the field to the untrained mind, clearly, interestingly and with enthusiasm for his subject? 5. Is he a creative thinker about the problems of his field? 6. Has he thought about the role of the department in the total process of college education? 7. Is he a man of character? In the area of administration there could be more explicit conservation and promotion of humanistic values. Public statement of the importance of the humanities—not as a sop to a segment of the faculty, but as an expression of conviction carefully arrived at—would redress the balance in education between two disparate but equally important elements: the scientific concern with quantitative aspects of reality presently observable, and the humanistic exploration of qualitative experience seeking that "consistent imagination" which Miss Dorothy Sayers has discussed so well in her Unpopular Essays.19 Such support should be more than verbal: it should be reflected in the budget. The kind of teaching to which we have referred in this memorandum calls for smaller classes, more teachers, better facilities, larger stipends for teaching fellows, more generous scholarships for graduate students in the humanities to build up the supply of future teachers in 61

these disciplines, and professorial salaries sufficient to hold our own with comparable, first-rate universities. Administrative officers and committees should be relieved of many of the routine activities which distract their time and energy from attention to the educational problems and policies of the institution. The danger of introducing business methods in the administration of higher education is that it may issue in the same subordination of ends and values to techniques that at present characterizes business itself. There should be a standing Committee on Humanistic Education with responsibility for keeping the program under constant review and making proposals for changes or new steps. To such a committee the report of the Survey of the Humanities might be referred for critical examination and implementation. But when all this has been said, we come back again to the responsibility of the teachers themselves. Their obligation as humanistic teachers is (1) to transmit established knowledge in the area of the course in such a way that it can serve as a basis for further thinking, (2) to bring into focus the light that it sheds on the values by which men live, (3) to cultivate a sensitive awareness of the types of human experience: intellectual, esthetic, moral and religious, (4) to help students to grasp the methods by which knowledge is gained in the field, and to achieve the capacity for thinking that is both imaginative and disciplined, and (5) to guide the student into integration of his educational experience. These would seem to be minimum achievements to be sought. Let us look briefly at each of these by way of summary. In transmitting established knowledge, the teacher can only provide a useful outline. This should be clearly articulated and comprehensive. The details should be left to collateral reading, and the tests should require of the student

62

sound organization of the factual material in its relevance to the main points of the outline provided. Students should be constantly reminded that within the time available for the course it is possible only to block out the area, and that any academic course at the college level is only an introduction. Occasional hints of the farther reaches of the subject will be offered with the hope of keeping their minds open to continuing study. But the course should by the end have furnished sufficient knowledge and a grasp of methods of inquiry so that further study can be carried on independently. The material of the course should be presented and assigned work so planned that students are encouraged to "think it through" in its relation to the clarification and expansion of their own understanding of human life. Does Wordsworth's account of his college experience ring true to their own? Does the primitive sense of the puzzling mana potency have any counterpart in civilized man's experience of awe? How would they appraise the character of Saladin? In what sense is the seventeenth century one of the great periods of transition in western culture? In what ways was Michelangelo a creative mind reaching out beyond the established order to which he belonged? Can a useful comparison be drawn between the book of Proverbs and Poor Richard's Almanac? What light does the "conditioned reflex" throw on the understanding of the techniques of propaganda? In trying to sensitize a class to the various types of human experience, the teacher will need to discipline his own thinking to avoid neglect of those values which are not central for himself or disparagement of human experience which he has not himself enjoyed. While he will inevitably treat with more enthusiasm those qualities of human life which appeal

63

especially to him, he should try to understand appreciatively other tastes and other convictions. This catholicity of understanding is a prerequisite of humanistic teaching, and it goes beyond an amused tolerance into genuine imaginative effort. If he knows the members of the class, he may find one who has had an experience comparable to that referred to in the material of the course, but never undergone by the teacher himself; and this may help others to enter more fully into the appreciation of it. If the teacher keeps this under control with pertinent questions designed to direct the attention of the class to the components of the experience, there is no reason why the relating of such experience should become mawkish or boring. T h e dominant educational attitude today places the main stress on the intellectual cultivation of the student, so that the esthetic element is often subordinated. But when we talk of the joy of intellectual activity for its own sake, are we not combining the intellectual satisfaction with esthetic pleasure? W e may speak of a beautiful demonstration in mathematics, or of a delicate dissection of an argument in logic, without regard to its utility. Not that the useful cannot also be beautiful. There is an older tradition than Aristotle which relates beauty, goodness and truth with usefulness; and economy of functional expression in architecture may yield its own purity of line. The place of religious and moral values in experience is not so generally admitted in education today. I shall deal with this in Part Two of this report; but we may note in passing that there is a squeamishness in many a classroom about exploring these aspects of human experience, and often a negligent and cynical attitude toward them. And there is a curious conspiracy of silence that deprives the students of a chance to study and discuss them.

64

With regard to the fourth objective of humanistic teaching, the grasp by students of the method of study appropriate to the subject matter in hand, we have already said much; but more attention might well be given to the word "appropriate." The temptation is to make the methodology too rigid or to apply methods not suited to the kind of data wc are examining. This question has received increasing notice in the field of social studies, which are just now recovering from too rigorous an attempt to be scientific in the same methodological sense as the natural sciences. For reasons already discussed, there exists an embarrassment amounting almost to a feeling of inferiority about the "unscientific" character of artistic and literary appreciation, and the means by which it is achieved. Since the creative artists and writers were not concerned with this problem, there would seem to be some form of communication at work which makes its own appeal to the public, and which relies on a body of human experience to which it can commend itself as genuine. The modes of apprehension are difficult even to define, and yet there is something in us that responds to what is "just right," whether it be a figure in poetry or an exquisite (or, maybe, a vigorous) line in painting. The critic may analyze the structure of a work of art, but this would seem to follow, rather than to precede, its apprehension. Not being competent to pursue such a discussion, I can only point to the fact that scientific method is not the appropriate one for dealing with such material, and that the teacher of literature or art has a right to devise his own methods— without intimidation. There would seem to be two ways in which the faculty might contribute to the integration of the student's education. One is by interdepartmental courses. These may be either survey courses in which a preliminary view is offered

65

of the various disciplines and their interrelations, or courses in which the integration of knowledge is developed around a given problem. Both approaches have been used with varying degrees of success. The characteristic difficulty of the broad interdepartmental survey is that, within the limited time allotted to it, the student gets only a superficial glimpse of each field, and cannot receive that training in method which is necessary to any competent understanding. The results are a confusing array of truncated information, a false sense of mastery, and a dangerous encouragement of superficiality. The faculty responsible for the conduct of such a survey course may remain aloof from the task of integration and content themselves with lecturing on their own specialties, leaving to the coordinator of the course the difficult assignment of achieving the integration. In this case the coordinator is expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the fields, including critical understanding of their several methods—an unreasonable expectation. Since such a course will involve enough students to require several sections for discussion, the assistants will also need this encyclopedic knowledge, and the expectation becomes still more impossible. The experiment at the University of Florida under the direction of Professor A. D. Graeffe has been fullv described in his book on Creative Education in the Humanities; 20 but it is confined to "arts and letters," and makes no attempt to include the natural and social sciences, or philosophy and religion. lie presents two plans: one based on chronological sequence, the other on topical arrangement. Yet a glance at these outlines reveals how rapid must be the transition, and how broad the generalizations made; and while the well-furnished mind of the teacher might see the connections, it is difficult to see how the students can keep to their saddles as the course gallops along.

66

The other alternative, in which a given problem is attacked from various angles, would seem to hold greater promise. It is closer to the actual process of intellectual exploration in scientific and scholarly research, as well as of ordinary commonsense thinking. But if this is to be followed, a greater flexibility of procedure is required in the classroom for the problem to unfold in terms of student thinking,—indeed, so much flexibility that it is difficult to plan a syllabus for such a course. Lacking some definite plan for the course, the achievement of balance among the perspectives would be extremely difficult; and again considerable confusion might arise in the student's mind. If, to counteract this, the teacher controls the discussion by shifting it from the line of current interest in the class to another aspect which he wishes to introduce, the students may conclude that the integrative process is being arbitrarily or artificially predetermined. They will then be tempted to give up and let the instructor have his way, in which case one of the main objectives of the course will have been sacrificed. Of course, this occurs in every course with a syllabus, for the teacher is continually having to say, "Well, we can't stay with this any longer. We must move on." And his description of the coverage of the course is a sort of contract which he feels obligated to keep. On the other hand, he may, like the professor who offered a course on the Fourth Gospel and covered only the first thirteen verses of Chapter One, deal with them in such a way as to enable the students to understand the whole book. The stylistic peculiarities of the author, the vocabulary in its relation to contemporary Hellenistic usage, the religious and philosophical context the terms employed, the introduction of Jesus Christ into this context with consequent shift in the meaning of the terms, the religious conflicts which

67

such a shift aroused—such matters ranged far beyond the text itself, but they arose within the careful scrutiny of the text, and in the process the students learned the method of exegesis. From such study of a relatively minute fragment the class gained a broad understanding of the subject and a sense of the integration of knowledge in the field. Other portions of the text they could now study by themselves, knowing what questions to ask and where to seek answers. In so far as this method of inquiry becomes an established habit of thinking, one of the most important elements in the humanistic attitude has been appropriated. The test is found in one's sense of the relevance of the remote, which lures the mind on to larger and larger possible contexts of knowledge in which immediate problems can be more intelligently understood, and in the light of which, despite the clamors of the moment, a judgment will be formed. The humane scholar or scientist is, then, a man with a reliable body of knowledge at his command, a capacity to bring his knowledge to bear on the meaning of human life, a catholic interest in all kinds of experience and a desire to understand them, a flexibility of approach to the varieties of reality which he encounters, imaginative and yet disciplined in his thinking, and able to see a situation as a whole. In other words, he is an educated man.

68

Acknowledgments and Reference Notes In the preparation of this report I have been helped by the generous advice of Dr. Willits and Dr. Preston, directors of the Educational Survey; by the opportunity to read the replies of faculty members to Dr. Willits regarding the status of the humanities at Pennsylvania; and by a conference with Dean Daly of the College. They are not responsible, however, for the opinions expressed here. NOTES

1. F. B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages (New York, Knopf, 1953), p. 308. 2. Ibid., p. 305. 3. G. M. Trevelyan, History of England (Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books), I. pp. 242 f. 4. Oxford Universal Dictionary, "Classical." 5. G. C. Leroy, in A. A. U. P. Bulletin, 39. No. 4, p. 574. 6. G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge, University Press, 1939), p. 409. 7. In N. Foerster and Others, Essays for College Men (New York, Holt, 1913), p. 14. 8. Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 612 f. 9. I am here, of course, paraphrasing R. W. Emerson. See his address oh "The American Scholar," in the Centenary Edition of his Complete Works (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1903), p. 102. 10. A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education (New York, Macmillan, 1929), pp. 41 f., 97, 156, 174. 11. Bulletin of the College for 1956-57, p. 28, under 3.c. 12. Revised edition, combined with Redbrick and these Vital Days (Hammondsville, Pelican Books, 1951). 13. London, SCM Press, 1949. 14. Bulletin of the College for 1956-57, pp. 25 f. 15. See ibid., p. 47.

69

16. Education for Professional Responsibility: Proceedings of the InterProfessions Conference (Pittsburgh, Carnegie Press, 1948). 17. R. H. Shryock, in A. A. U. P. Bulletin, 38, No. 1, p. 38. 18. Ibid., p. 47. 19. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1947. pp. 54-66. 20. New York, Harper, 1951. See especially pp. 142-162.

70

PART TWO

Ethical and Religious Values

Introduction It has been a problem for the writer to decide whether the treatment of ethical and religious values should be included as an integral part of the general discussion of humanistic teaching, or postponed to this point in the memorandum. I have chosen the latter course for three reasons: (1) many readers of the memorandum may balk at the views expressed regarding ethics and religion, and thus have their attention distracted from the line of thought pursued in Part One; (2) it is hoped that the general point of view expressed in earlier discussions will secure enough acceptance to predispose the reader to give serious consideration to Part Two; (3) I am here dealing with material directly related to the work of my own department, and its introduction into the earlier discussion might have been interpreted as biasing the treatment. I wish to make it clear at once, however, that my postponement of the present discussion is not a measure of its importance. I would also remind the reader that my task is not to examine the situation of moral and religious values in the University community as a whole, but to deal with them as a part of the academic program.

73

1 Historical Background All students of higher education in America are familiar with the fact that, in the early colleges, the major emphasis was on theological training: Harvard was founded to "advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust"; while Yale announced its purpose "to supply the churches of this colony with a learned, pious and orthodox ministry." The curriculum at Yale in 1729 required students to preach sermons, and to study Ames' theological Medulla and Cases of Conscience. The faculty considered itself charged with the moral nurture of the student, and with his Christian faith and his call to the ministry. The colleges acted in loco parentis to younger students than we now have. It should be noted in this regard that the University of Pennsylvania differs from the other "Ivy League" colleges (with the exception of Cornell) in having initiated its program not so much to train ministers as to develop public leadership for the province. This has given it a tradition free from the theological domination that characterized other colleges. With the achievement of independence and the adoption of the Constitution, the nation took a definite position against establishing any state church. The quarrels between the sects were largely responsible for this, and, though religious values were widely recognized, sectarian indoctrina75

tion in public education was increasingly excluded. Even at Columbia as early as 1754, when it was still King's College, it was specified that doctrinal tenets should not be imposed on the "schollars." The early part of the nineteenth century saw a movement to separate theological instruction from the colleges into divinity schools. This occurred at Princeton in 1812, at Harvard in 1819 and at Yale in 1822. The result was not that the undergraduate program of instruction lost its religious courses; for we find courses in Bible and theology still offered in 1834. But educational developments in the last half of the nineteenth century—the preoccupation with economic and political concerns in the nation at large, the influence of German education on research training, the growth of privately endowed colleges without denominational control, the increasing role of science in the curriculum, the rise in student age mitigating the need for parental care by the faculty, and the impact of liberal ideas of toleration—all tended to distract from the earlier emphasis on religious and moral training in the colleges. By the opening of the twentieth century we find demands arising for some religious instruction; but these were met too often by the engagement of local ministers known more for their piety than for their scholarship. The effect was a decline in the academic quality of instruction in ethics or religion. It was to remedy this situation that Professor Charles F. Kent of Yale organized in 1922 the National Council on Religion in Higher Education. He wanted to make the teaching of religion an intellectually and educationally respectable undertaking, for he saw the need for more ethically enlightened leadership in business and the professions. But this could not be attained unless the teachers of these and related subjects were themselves men and women of scholarly

76

discipline. The fellowships which now bear his name were granted to aid in training for the Ph.D. carefully selected students of intellectual achievement and promise; and to enable them, in consultation with able and experienced teachers and scholars in the field, to discuss the problems involved and to improve their teaching. The impact of this program on religion and ethics in higher education has been impressive; and educational administrators have gained a new confidence in the possibility of securing faculty members in these areas who can hold their own with their colleagues. At the same time, the liberal, non-sectarian spirit in which the teaching was done has led many universities— and even state institutions—to introduce courses in religion. By 1955 there were 433 Fellows in the Council, teaching not only in the fields of religion and ethics, but also in such subjects as philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, economics, political science, literature, classics, and the natural sciences, as well as engineering and medicine.

77

2 The Present Situation Meanwhile, many factors have compelled a fresh appraisal of the obligations of higher education with respect to ethical and spiritual values. The two world wars have shaken our complacency—so much that 1914 has come to be thought of as marking the end of an era. The failure of military victory to make the values of our democratic culture secure, and hysterical efforts to protect us against the intrusion of communist ideas have led to re-examination of the deeper foundations of human freedom. Corruption in high places and the increase of adult crime and juvenile delinquency have forced upon us consideration of the need for moral training of the young. Changes in the pattern of American family life have led many parents to refer the moral nurture of their children to the schools and colleges, but educational institutions have passed the ball to the church and synagogue. The result for young people has been moral confusion and religious illiteracy. For the first time in history man now possesses the means to destroy his own culture, thanks to the awful power of atomic fission or fusion. Confronted by this peril, some have chosen a hectic hedonism as an anodyne, others have become fatalistic and surrendered their own responsibility, and still others try to find some basis for living decently and creatively under the shadow of the gigantic mushroom. "A time of social revolution," says Helen M. Lynd, co-author of

78

the Middletown studies, "need not be a time of paralysis or defense. In such a period, the business of the intellectual is to discover what new forms of human values are coming into being, to try to distinguish the valid from the specious, and to help to bring those charged with hope to fulfillment." 1 While, in my opinion, the so-called "revival of religion" in our day has been much exaggerated, it does point to a general search for some deeper values to live by. But the religious illiteracy of many intellectuals, or their reaction against an impossible set of religious beliefs, has precluded for them the sources of strength and courage which intelligent religion offers. To make these available—they cannot be imposed—is a challenge to the university as the intellectual conscience of the community. The current review of liberal education is only the latest stage in a continuing process. It is inevitable that an institution dedicated to the critical study of life and thought should engage in self-criticism. But self-criticism is impossible without some criteria of value; and so the place of values in education is assured. The question is whether we shall arbitrarily exclude moral and religious values from the discussion. In spite of the findings of psychology, we still talk of "the cultivation of the mind" as though it were a purely intellectual process; and at the same time, we worry about motivating the student to engage in the intellectual task. We also worry about the present motives of students: social standing, exploitation of knowledge for the sake of wealth, power to control other men, etc. The value of truth and personal integrity are assumed as preconditions of the intellectual enterprise; and yet we evade the explicit study of such values. Ethics is concerned with the impact of our conduct on

79

other people. Judgments are formed about what is "good" or "just" in conduct. These judgments may be concrete and issue in specific moral codes which prohibit stealing, or lying, or neglect of old people and the weak, or murder, or polygamy. Such judgments vary with different cultures. They raise two questions: since the codes vary, is there any universal code by which men may live?; and how are we to define the terms employed in moral discourse? The first is a practical question, the second more theoretical. For the educated person both questions are important, since he seeks to think critically about his obligations. Ethical values are therefore an integral part of his life, and, as such, should be subjected to careful study. By religious or spiritual values I mean those which have to do with a person's primary or ultimate meaning. Under pressures which threaten his own survival the individual not only tries to save his life: he also tries to think what will be lost if he dies. Dostoevsky, who had actually faced death on the gallows, declared that we know what life really means only when we have confronted death. But in the perspective of what life ultimately means, "What it all adds up to," practical decisions take on a new dimension of urgency. Here the inner self extricates itself from the physical and the social conditions of its existence, and returns to its own intrinsic meaning. What it means to be a man rather than a clod, a human being rather than a physical object, a finite being rather than some eternal process—these are the questions of which the spiritual values are an expression. There can be bad as well as good religion, according to the individual's grasp of the realities with which he has to come to terms. The task of exploring these realities in the world and in human personality is one which the university undertakes to superintend. University education therefore has an inev-

80

itable influence, positively or negatively, upon the moral and religious life of the student. To acknowledge this influence is to admit ethical and religious thought to the sphere of higher education. To attack moralism and religiosity is beside the point, and to attempt thereby to evade the responsibility is surely not straight thinking. We do not give up astronomy because many believe in astrology, nor history because there are people who accept legends as sober facts. Indeed, the very existence of such perverse views is itself a challenge to clearer thought on these matters. So should it be with ethics and religion. When we turn to the University of Pennsylvania itself, we must note, in addition to these general conditions, certain special elements in our own situation. The secular tradition to which we have already referred can be overemphasized. There was definite instruction in morals and religion in the early days of the College in Philadelphia, and the curriculum has always included some work in these fields. But the fear sometimes expressed that the freedom from ecclesiastical and sectarian domination hitherto enjoyed may be in jeopardy must be taken seriously. There are at the present time ecclesiastical arguments being advanced for the restoration of religion to supremacy in the college curriculum in this country; and these arguments do not always draw a clear distinction between a proper concern for ethics and religion as we have defined them above, and indoctrination in a particular set of beliefs and attitudes. Confronted by the spiritual and moral emergencies to which I have already alluded, it is tempting to prescribe such indoctrination; but a university must resist the temptation. On the other hand, it must be recognized that we can indoctrinate through deliberate neglect; and students may be led to conclude that religious and moral attitudes make no differ-

81

ence to a man. In his penetrating study of the contemporary British university, Sir Walter Moberly puts it very succinctly: It is a fallacy to suppose that by omitting a subject you teach nothing about it. On the contrary you teach that it is to be omitted, and that it is therefore a matter of secondary importance. And you teach this not openly and explicitly, which would invite criticism; you simply take it for granted and thereby insinuate it silently, insidiously, and all but irresistibly. If indoctrination is bad, this sort of conditioning and preconscious habituation is surely worse.2 To the extent that this is done, a negative indoctrination is being carried on, which is unworthy of a university committed to seeking light in all areas. The home background of the students is another important factor in the situation. The diverse religious affiliations of students' families are evident in the distribution among Jews, Roman Catholics, Protestants and others; but this tells us little about the religious nurture of the students themselves, for this affiliation is often a nominal matter, or the parents are themselves confused or disaffected in religious matters. It is safe to say that the majority of the students know little or nothing about their own religious heritage whether Jewish or Christian. In the field of moral conduct there is not only wide diversity in family practice in such matters as drinking, but in the area of public responsibility there is often little more than a conventional code or apathy. The consequence is that the University cannot count on any common body of attitudes among students in either ethics or religion. This condition is accentuated by the fact, already referred to, that almost half of the students live at home while com82

ing to college. The dominant force, however weak or strong, in their moral and religious life will be wielded by the family; and it would be difficult for the University to undertake much responsibility in this regard. Difficult, but not impossible. A more pervasive factor is the tendency to subordinate the discussion of values in teaching. Many faculty feel that values are subjective judgments, which must be left to the student himself to choose; and that it would be presumptuous for the teacher to bring them under public inspection in the classroom. Or it is felt that values are on this basis so relative that no judgments can be reached. Here again the negative effect is still achieved that since values cannot properly be examined and since they are relative anyway, they are ignored; with the consequence that the student reaches the conclusion that they are not important. To this question we shall return later. With this goes a disavowal of faculty responsibility for dealing with questions of morality and religion. The student who raises such a question is put off, or referred to the Department of Philosophy or Religious Thought. But in this case the integration of the student's education is impeded; while the other departments or the administration may claim that the University is discharging its responsibility through the departments mentioned. But only a fraction of the total student body has contact with either of these departments. It would be unfair, however, to overlook the faculty members who, in the classroom and in personal interviews, convey to their students a sense of the importance of such values, and even help them to reach value-judgments on important matters. Of course, those faculty members who think that religion is on its way out have a right to their opinion—in so far as

83

that opinion is based on fact rather than prejudice. But in this case, it should be offered only as an opinion and not as a sociological fact, and the students should be urged to consider it in that light. And care should be taken not to weight the argument unfairly. I am not objecting to criticism of religion or of current morality. This is a proper function of university education; and it is undertaken in both philosophy and religious thought. Indeed, critical discussion of both is to be welcomed in other classrooms; but this is to be distinguished from the slurring remark or the cynical smile with which it is sometimes dismissed from consideration.

H4

3 The Place of Ethics and Religion in the Curriculum When all these problems have been taken into consideration, a case may still be made for the inclusion of moral and religious values in higher education. First, morality and religion are too tenacious in human life to be treated so cavalierly; and the demonstrated capacity of ethical and religious thinkers to include in their views the findings of modern science and to raise critical questions about the omnicompetence of science demands that the matter be at least kept open for further inquiry. Second, any organized view of life which takes into account intellectual and esthetic meanings is still a philosophical orientation and can be effective in the development of a balanced life only if it takes the form of a commitment in action. But such a decision is at once confronted by the demand to know whether what Pascal called "the wager" of one's life, since it cannot be avoided, is on the soundest basis available. This is the purpose of ethical and religious thinking. Third, to take umbrage in the subjective or private character of moral or religious values as "mere feelings" is to raise the question whether any psychology of feeling is possible, or any critical estimates of popular enthusiasms, or any notion of a balanced personality.

85

Fourth, the responsibility cannot be relegated completely to the church or the synagogue. The university cannot yield its right to examine critically the moral and religious practices and beliefs of society. The history of western culture illustrates abundantly the value of such examination: Plato's critical treatment of the Greek myths, medieval scholastic re-examination of Platonic thought, Renaissance criticism of Aristotelian theology and ascetic morality, the skeptical questions of Hume and Kant regarding time-honored arguments for the existence of God, more recent Utilitarian examination of moral judgment, or psychological analysis of conscience. A university, standing in this long tradition of intellectual inquiry, cannot now suddenly absolve itself of responsibility for such study. Fifth, the task of the university is, as we have said, the transmission, criticism and advancement of culture. For good or ill, morals and religion have been an integral part of culture; and therefore merit systematic study. Furthermore, the products of ethical and religious reflection constitute a large part of the great literature of the world, embracing not only scriptures like the Vedas and the Upanishads of India, the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, the Tripitaka of Theravada Buddhism or the Confucian classics, but countless noncanonical works like Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Divine Comedy, Pascal's Thoughts, Paine's The Age of Reason, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, not to mention Oriental writers. But culture is not only a social phenomenon, it is also a personal possession. The individual may acquire a veneer of culture by some knowledge of "the best that has been thought and said," but in a deeper sense he must lay hold on the values and the assumptions that underlie civilization

86

so as to have a basis for accepting or rejecting the cultural patterns of his own place and time. He will see that the moral and religious values are not merely given, but have also been worked out with struggle and insight by creative thinkers of the past. There is always danger, as Professor Brooks of Pomona College once put it, that "the living faith of the dead may become the dead faith of the living"; and it is part of the university's duty to see that students capture something of the adventure of that living faith. It is obviously impossible here to review the evolution of morality or of religion. But two things stand out: both morality and religion have undergone development in the forms of expression which they have received in different cultures and in other ages; and yet there is a continuing quest which has persisted throughout these changing forms. Whatever differences have emerged in the moral codes or the modes of religious life and thought, men are perennially seeking a firm basis of moral behavior and an interpretation of the meaning of human life by which they can live. For educators to blind themselves to this fact is simply not to be realistic about human nature. The record of history is certainly not exhausted by the political or economic struggles between men and states, or the advance of scientific control. It includes also those movements which point to the search for a wisdom that is more than knowledge. It includes the heroic struggle of men to rise above frustration, their reliance on vision and hope that cannot be measured, their daring projection of ideals that have enthralled and inspired them, their loyalty to truth in the face of persecution, their flights of imagination and faith far beyond the systems of their day, and their dogged adherence to the reality of inner experiences which their best knowledge could not explain. This is more intractable

87

material for the student of the human adventure, but it is none the less real; and the humanist knows that it is real. Joseph Wood Krutch has stated the case well: Unless w e are willing to affirm boldly that there is a large a r e a of elusive truth w h i c h it would b e fatal to neglect but which, nevertheless, cannot be dealt with by any scientific m e t h o d ; unless we are willing to admit also that in this a r e a doubt and dispute must rage, perhaps forever, because w h a t is included within it c a n n o t be measured or subjected to controlled experiment, then there is little use in "defending the humanities," because t h e r e is little left to defend. 3

When we examine the curricular offerings at the University of Pennsylvania that deal with moral and religious values, we must not confine ourselves to courses so labeled. All through the program are courses which include such values as part of the subject-matter. It is not possible to know from the Bulletin descriptions how much time is devoted to them in the syllabi, nor, obviously, what attitude is taken to them by the instructor. But, in so far as ethical and religious issues arise in the treatment of all sorts of subjects, this is a very desirable contribution to the education of the student; for seeing these values appearing in a variety of contexts has the effect of making them an integral part of human thought. T h e courses in the College may be arranged in four groups with regard to their relation to discussion of ethics and religion: (1) Some are clearly technical courses into which consideration of moral and religious questions does not enter. Such are the mathematical and scientific courses, those training the student in a given language or in the general science of linguistics (though in the last the place of myth as a form of communication might merit discussion). (2) Some have

88

potential moral or religious significance, such as courses in literature or art which deal with materials which express moral or religious meanings. The extent to which such material is explicated in terms of these meanings depends largely on the teacher; but it is difficult to see how the art of Michelangelo can be understood without reference to medieval religious ideas, or Milton's Paradise Lost without some explanation of his theology, or Palestrina's music without an understanding of church liturgy. (3) Some courses explicitly include ethical and religious topics among the topics of the syllabus, such as social institutions, or Moslem civilization, or sixteenth century German history, or the life of the Romans, or Colonial Puritanism. (4) Some are courses specifically dealing with ethical and religious life and thought, such as Primitive Religion or the Medieval Church or the courses under Philosophy in the history and theory of ethics and in the philosophy of religion, and those in the department of Religious Thought. In such curricular programs ethical and religious values may, then, be either (1) irrelevant to the particular subjectmatter, or (2) implicit in the material, or (3) incidental to the main concern of the course, or (4) the focus of attention. Where they are implicit or incidental, the point of view of the teacher becomes important, for he can either bring out the connections or pass over them. Many reasons are advanced why he should leave them severely alone. Some of these we have already seen. He may argue that time does not permit him to make such excursions, but this is itself a valuejudgment as to the relative importance of moral and religious values in the total education of the student. Or it may be said that, not being expert in such matters, he prefers not to engage in inexpert discussion of them; but this does not preclude classroom recognition that such values are present

89

and are worthy of further reflection. Again, to argue that any statements he might make in the area of morals or religion would demonstrate a lack of objectivity rests on a misconception of objectivity; and this we examined in Part One of this memorandum (pp. 32-35). Finally, if it is contended that religion (if not morals) is outmoded, we can refer to the preceding discussion and ask whether this is not itself of questionable objective truth. Reserving for the moment the discussion of courses in ethics and religion, I wish to stress the importance of the attitude toward such values in other courses, and to repeat that they should be accorded their normal place in any treatment of social and personal life. Anyone who reads regularly the London Times Literary Supplement and the book review sections of the New York Sunday Times and The Saturday Review is impressed by the squeamishness or indifference of American literary editors in dealing with religious books, and, to a lesser degree, with ethical treatises. The British take them in their stride as a part of the significant literature of our time. Except for the occasional more sensational book or topic, like the recent ones on the Dead Sea Scrolls, solid works in religious or ethical thought receive little space in American journals—and this often by reviewers who show limited technical understanding of the field. It is not surprising that intellectuals gather the impression that little of scholarly worth is being written in these fields. This seems to me nothing less than editorial irresponsibility. The same attitude, introduced into the classroom of a university, is equally irresponsible. If students are to gain a realistic view of contemporary or historic culture, then ethical and religious ideas must be granted their natural place in education. This place is not defined solely by the material on these questions, but also by the subtle influence of the teacher 90

himself. As I said in the preceding part, the intellectual discipline itself has moral overtones; and the teacher's devotion to truth and to critical methods of thinking is itself a powerful moral factor in the education of the young, while his sensitivity to spiritual aspects of human life makes a contribution to the student's sense of values. In this sense, any subject is the occasion for ethical and religious training. When we come to the explicit treatment of ethical and religious values, the same thing must be said as we said before: that such subject-matter may itself be handled without humanistic concern. A course in the history of ethics or of religion might be conducted in such a way that the survey of the different views which have been entertained, presented external facts without entering into the experiences which explain their human significance. Or an analysis of ethical or religious propositions might be carried out in such a way as to reduce them to the status of meaningless statements. I doubt if this can succeed, but it has been tried. The objectives should be (1) to introduce the student to the facts without prejudgment so that he may have a reliable basis for judgments of his own; (2) to help him to enter into the experiences which give the facts their meaning in their own context so that he can, at least in some measure, understand them enough to examine them further; (3) to encourage him to evaluate them intelligently in comparison with a more comprehensive view of the moral or religious quest of the human race; and (4) to give opportunity for, and guidance in, reaching some significant conclusions of his own. In the present curriculum at Pennsylvania courses dealing with ethics and religion are scattered through several departments but concentrated in Philosophy and Religious Thought. In Anthropology a course is offered from time to time on Primitive Religion; the English Department has one 91

on The English Bible; there is one in the German Department on Humanism and Reformation; and the History Department devotes a substantial part of one course to the Reformation, and a whole course to The Medieval Church. In the Department of Oriental Studies are several advanced courses in Oriental philosophy and literature which deal with religious or ethical thought. On the other hand, there seem to be no courses in the social sciences which provide for study of social problems from the ethical standpoint. The Department of Philosophy offers two courses in the history of ethical thought: one from Plato to Kant, and another the modern period. In addition, a two-term course is offered on Current Problems of Ethical Theory. An historical treatment of Philosophy of Religion is also provided in this department. In the Department of Religious Thought, established in 1949, an introductory survey course running through the year covers the Living Religions of the World; but no specialized work is offered except in Hellenistic Religions and in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here the historical approach dominates, with courses in the development of religion in the Old Testament and New Testament, and advanced courses on Sources for the Life of Christ, and on the Life and Letters of Paul. Two survey courses deal with the history of Christian Thought and of Jewish Thought respectively; and advanced courses are devoted to Christian Thought since the Reformation, and Contemporary Christian Thinkers. In these courses the religious development is dealt with in its relation to general cultural history, and questions of a theological character are explored. In the area of religious philosophy one course, Basic Concepts of Religion, is so conducted as to require the student during the

92

term to develop an outline of his own religious position under the critical guidance of the instructor, who allows the individual to work out his own philosophy of life. Two advanced courses provide for discussion of The Place of Reason in Religion, and Naturalism and Theism; and in these the rival positions are examined and evaluated. Plans have been made to add next year two courses on religion in America, which will be historical in nature. The interest of students in this new department is shown by the growth of registrations to 309 in the Spring Term of 1956. The bulk of these registrations are for the survey of world religions. Two impressions stand out: the students are ignorant but eager, and they seem to appreciate the effort to integrate various aspects of cultural history in dealing with religion in its social setting. This is mentioned because of its bearing on our earlier discussion of humanistic teaching. It is obvious from this summary of the offerings in the area of ethical and religious values that great gaps remain. The psychology and the sociology of religion are not dealt with except as some remarks may be made in explanation of certain religious phenomena. There are no advanced courses in the several religions, outside of Judaism and Christianity. There is no treatment of the Jewish or the Christian faith as a system of belief, though some of the students in the course on Basic Concepts of Religion use the occasion to expound a Christian or a Jewish position, as others do to offer a skeptical or an atheistic philosophy. The field of religious ethics remains untouched, except incidentally; and the ancient and medieval periods of western religious thought are uncovered, except in the survey histories of Jewish and Christian thought.

93

By and large, then, there is a substantial body of curricular offerings in the areas of religion and ethics, but, in comparison with the detailed programs in other fields, they are very limited in scope and in development of specialized treatment.

94

4 Recommendations Here, as in the humanities in general, the nub of the problem is the teacher. Criteria for the selection of teachers are therefore important. In addition to the criteria suggested for humanistic teachers in general, there are special problems in the choice of men or women to deal with the academic fields of ethics and religion. Such scholars have presumably chosen one or both of these fields for an academic career because they have conviction about the importance of moral and religious values. It becomes more momentous that the teacher should not be dogmatic or intolerant in his teaching. To override objections or to exclude from consideration viewpoints at variance with his own is inadmissible. He must be able to see moral codes or religious beliefs as products of historical development, and to deal with them in relation to other cultural forces and values. He must be objective, not in the sense of standing outside of any religious or ethical commitment, but in the sense of trying to put himself in the place of another thinker who holds different ethical values or a contrary religious position. This is of course a counsel of perfection, for the emotional conditioning which is a powerful force in religious or moral beliefs is different for a Hindu than for a Christian or a Jew; but he is charged with the self-discipline and the effort of imagination to attempt this. Only when this sympathetic appreciation has been achieved can he deal objectively 95

with the tradition in which he himself stands. He should be able to state an atheist's position in such a way that the atheist would feel he had been fairly represented. He should combine intellectual acumen and clarity with an awareness of, and sensitivity to, non-rational factors operative in religious experience and moral earnestness. Perhaps this calls for what Professor Hocking h a s termed "the principle of alternation" between thinking and feeling as the creative tension in understanding. But this he shares with the teacher in other humanistic fields. In view of the importance of cultivating moral sensitivity and ethical intelligence in those who are supposed to be educated for social leadership, more provision should be made for courses dealing with the problems of contemporary society. The absence of any treatment of social and economic problems from the standpoint of moral values indicates a lack which educators in professional schools are recognizing. Frequently in the last few years we have been confronted by the spectacle of college graduates failing to exercise any critical judgment and restraint in the face of popular hysteria, or to champion the cause of freedom or justice. The passion for social justice that inspired earlier economists and sociologists and political scientists has been so much inhibited by efforts to be detached and "objective" that students are being denied the experience of being challenged to take their place in enlightening and guiding the conscience of the community. This cannot be done by theoretical courses alone, but requires classroom treatment of concrete social problems in which the art of wise social action is developed against the background of reliable knowledge of the facts. This does not mean that the University should become the exponent of some plan of social reform, but that it should help its students to understand what pro-

96

posals are being advanced and how to appraise them. Neutralism in this field may lead to amoralism, and amoralism will by neglect allow society to disintegrate to the point where the values of education itself will become nugatory. This problem obtains in all the social studies. It cannot be left to the ethicist and the philosopher alone. The programs, as well as the methods of teaching, in all departments should be examined with this urgent question in view. The more education is democratized, the more important it is to develop a body of students who are informed and critically aware of the moral issues in our civilization. The intellectual world is divided into two groups. Some are optimistically assured that society is on the upward march, that more knowledge will solve our problems and more scientific control improve our human lot. Others are unable to share this optimism. They see the disintegration of established values without any substitute integrated pattern of life emerging, and they fear that use of knowledge without regard to moral and spiritual values will end in disaster. The issue is being joined increasingly in public debate, though there are still many who do not want to face it. Like the old lady who was shocked to hear about the theory of evolution and said, "If it is true, for goodness' sake don't tell anybody about it," they want to ignore the troublesome question. But if it is to be faced, then civilization must itself be re-examined in its context; and this context is the universe in which cultures rise and die. It is with this orientation of man to the ultimate realities that religion is concerned; and in the light of such orientation that religious ethics appraises morality. While it is true that religious forces have sometimes ranged themselves on the side of social conservatism, or of tyranny and injustice and race prejudice; we must also re-

97

member the Hebrew prophets who attacked the social evils of their day, calling for an end to oppression of the poor, judicial corruption, and religious hypocrisy. Thomas Aquinas and Mencius alike spoke out against the tyrant. John Wesley took up the cause of the tin miners of Cornwall, and Charles G. Finney that of the Negro slaves. It is a part of the education of the young to know about this long history of the struggle for moral values, and to take their own place in it. They will find that religion is not only a source of comfort and hope, but an astringent critic of the conscience and a stimulus to courageous moral action. The contemporary apostles of "peace of mind" and of "positive thinking" that turns God to practical uses for self-advancement tend to distract attention from this other great tradition. After all, the symbol of Christianity is a cross. And that cross is borne bravely today by many an unpopular critic of our social order. In a day of much prating of security when there is little to offer, religion can show men how to live with insecurity. And this too is a part of education. The teaching of students in the field of religion requires more teachers than are now available. This points to the need for a program for graduate education in religion. It is not the proper function of the department of Religious Thought to provide professional training for the ministry or the rabbinate: that is the task of the theological seminary. But the increasing demand for teachers of religion in the colleges and universities, and the shortage of such teachers places upon the University the obligation to prepare teachers in this as in other fields. Princeton University has recently embarked on such a program leading to the Ph.D. degree and Harvard is developing one. Though Pennsylvania has in the past had a committee on the History of Religion, made up of representatives from related fields,

98

and has granted the Ph.D. degree for work under such supervision, this committee has now lapsed. Now that there is a department of Religious Thought, the graduate program should properly be developed under its aegis, and provisions made for an adequate staff to supervise doctoral work in the area in conjunction with related departments. T h e question of administrative support of ethical and religious values in the University as a whole is fourfold: official recognition of the importance of these is contained in the appointment of a University Chaplain; various denominational bodies and non-sectarian groups are active on the campus and are to some extent under the supervision of the Administration, being at present coordinated by the Chaplain; throughout the various schools of the University are provided administrative personnel officers in whose task of counseling the ethical and spiritual values are directly involved; and finally, the curricular treatment of religion is envisaged in the establishment of an appropriate department of study. The first three of these are properly concerns of the survey of student life now going on, and he outside the scope of this memorandum; but they remain a responsibility for administrative consideration. The last mentioned has been the concern of this second part of the report.

NOTES 1. The American Scholar, XXI, No. 1 (1951-52), p. 31. 2. The Crisis in the University (London, SCM Press, 1949), p. 56. 3. Saturday Review, June 4, 1955, p. 23.

99