COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY

The latest faculty report from Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn's experimental college at Wisconsin University contains a proposal that college, especially state institutions, should mould their curricula so as to train students to deal with the particular problems of the state in which they are located. Asserting the need for expert public servants, the report claims that the best way to impart the essential training is to use the local problems as a basis for a curriculum and to illustrate solutions with examples taken from history.

Modern civilization has become highly complicated; its difficulties are far removed from the average college curriculam. And there has recently been a justified agitation for an intelligent correlation between the two instead of their present divorce. In this light, therefore, the suggestion is to be commended as a healthy awakening, but examined more closely it reveals two unfortunate tendencies. An equitable balance in the curriculum between things modern and things historical is highly desirable, but it is absurd to suppose that without a sound understanding of the past the student can hope to gain a firm foundation on which to base his attitude toward present difficulties. The Wisconsin report, in proposing almost complete emphasis on the present, disregards this fundamental and clothes its suggestion with inexcusable superficiality.

Still more questionable is the proposal to limit the "problems" to the locality of the particular college. In advocating what amounts to a vocational school for local politicians, the suggestions overlooks not only the essential purpose of a University but one of the most significant lessons of the present crisis. Universities should equip men with a foundation for future study and a broad perspective on which to base their thought on important questions. Never has the world felt a greater need for men with such training. In allowing one of its conclusions to be so highly colored by immediate reactions to a temporary exigency, the Wisconsin report shows an absence of the thoughtful judgment which characterizes other valuable findings in connection with the experimental college.