Word: curricular
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...French music is available in Paine Hall, French literature high up in Widener, French phonograph records at the Union, and French movies at the Geographical Institute. Nowhere is there a permanent exhibit of French photographs, maps, sketches, statues, or paintings; nor is there any logical center for French extra-curricular lectures, or for the now moribund French Club. These basic defects--decentralization and inadequacy--are also found in the Spanish and Italian Departments, and both could be corrected by a Center for Romance Civilization...
However, such grand vistas have been opened in the educational landscape by this scheme that every effort should be made to preserve these, even at the expense of painting over other original aims. There are three separate and distinct aspects to the American Civilization Plan. First is its extra-curricular nature. This looks toward the inculcation of a habit of self-education in students, toward the provision of a "key to future education" which would make learning a life-long process. Second is its subject matter. This is American history in the broadest sense--cultural, scientific, and economic as well...
...made some striking contributions: a notable reading list in history, a series of brilliant lectures, a group of earnest scholars who have enriched the Harvard community. Yet it has had meagre success in the attainment of a primary goal, which was to lure students into the realms of extra-curricular study, to inoculate them with the virus of self-education...
...sacrificing the first aim, the last two can still be salvaged. As a purely voluntary scheme, the Plan has failed because students refuse to take time off from their other college activities, curricular or extra-curricular. But it could be made to work if it were taken off a voluntary basis, if an inducement were added to lure students into its fold...
...extra-curricular aspect was a vital part of the original program, and it must be abandoned with regret. But the transcendent importance of the other two features makes this course an economical one. Wisdom to judge the present comes mainly from knowledge of the past; which is to say that Americans can use their institutions more intelligently if they realize how these originated and developed. On the other hand, learning, which has tended in recent eras to fall into tiny, unrelated pieces, has meaning only when it is a related whole. Thus an American Civilization Plan which still teaches history...