Excerpt from Making Liberal Men and Women: Public Criticism of Present-Day Education, the New Paganism, the University, Politics and Religion

French, of Spanish and of German, and yet the high school or college graduate who can speak or write any one of these languages correctly and freely, or read them save with difficulty, is rare indeed; that for fifty years we have poured out money without stint for the teaching of the natural and experimental sciences, and have provided costly laboratories and collections to make that teaching practical, yet the result, so far as giving a general com mand of scientific method or general knowledge of scientific facts is concerned, is quite negligible; that school and college students spend years upon the study of history and yet few really know any history; that these students are uniformly taught to read and are guided toward read ing that which is worth while, yet it is clear that the greater part of their reading is of that which is unworthy to be read. More criticism than was ever leveled against the study of Latin, Greek and mathematics based upon the meager practical results obtained, can be repeated with equal force against those newer subjects of school and college study which have so largely displaced Latin, Greek and mathematics.

In Columbia College a definite and well-considered attempt is making to overcome these unfortunate condi tions of modern education, and to build a wise, judicious and truly educational program of study upon a sound foundation. This foundation is provided by the course entitled Introduction to Contemporary Civilization, prescribed for all members of the Freshman Class, and given five times weekly throughout Freshman Year. The purpose of this course is. To give the student early in his college residence a body of objective material upon which to base his own later and more advanced studies and his own judgments concerning the world in which he lives. A result of prescribing this course for all Freshmen is to make sure that every student in Columbia College has a common starting point and a single point of vantage from which tostudy, to understand and to appreciate the world of nature and of man. It is significant, too, that in this course the student is brought at once face to face with real interests and with genuine problems as they exist today. These interests and these problems are then placed in their historic setting, the story of their development is traced, and they are analyzed into their simplest parts. The large measure of success that has attended the introduction of this course, and the great interest taken. In it by the undergraduates themselves, indicate that the Faculty of Columbia College is on the right track, and that it seems likely to do its full part in rescuing American college education from the reproach that is so often heaped upon it, sometimes perhaps unjustly, but too frequently with a measure of justice that we cannot refuse to recognize.

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