Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/06/02/survey_says.php
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Barely 17 percent of Dartmouth students can name three of the twelve apostles, and fewer than a quarter know that Goethe wrote Faust. Most shocking, perhaps, is this tid-bit: a full four percent believe Benjamin Franklin invented the printing press. (I can only imagine how long it took the compilers of Shakespeare's First Folio to handwrite multiple copies of the 900-page volume).
These and other fun facts come from the latest installment of the Dartmouth Review Western Culture Quiz. Not surprisingly, we found that, despite a significant increase in the academic qualifications of Dartmouth students, their knowledge of basic history and culture questions has not significantly improved since we last administered the survey in 1998.
Now, this is the part where I'm supposed to say that Dartmouth should be exactly as it was in the good ol' days before minorities and women, perhaps even as it was in the time of Daniel Webster, when only students "versed in Virgil, Cicero's Select Orations, the Greek Testament, [and] able accurately to translate English into Latin" were admitted to the College.
Dartmouth is certainly failing somewhere, and most students know it. Many respondents commented that they knew more of the questions in high school, several said they felt "embarrassed" by their lack of knowledge, and one even said, only half-jokingly, that "I was going out tonight, but now I'm going to go home and study."
What's needed for Dartmouth to fulfill its liberal arts mission isn't necessarily mastery of any particular set of facts but rather the transmission of a shared body of knowledge and skills. Presumably, this includes instruction in grammar and composition, but, as Michael Ellis explains on page fourteen, the English department has abdicated its responsibility of ensuring students know how to write.
English 5 has been delegated to junior faculty, while freshman seminars are taught by professors from a potpourri of departments often more concerned with matters on content than style. According to an internal report obtained by the Review, when students were surveyed about how effectively these required classes worked together, "it hadn't occurred to them that these courses were indeed intended by the institution to constitute a coherent writing program." And it's little wonder when they're taking classes like "The Colonization of Moon and Mars," taught by a physics professor for their freshmen seminar.
As such a title suggests, increasing specialization is largely to blame for the current dismal state of affairs. Just how specialized is illustrated on page 13, where Kale Bongers outlines the classes one could take and still graduate from Dartmouth (majoring in sociology, for whatever that's worth).
While the fact that a course called "Constructing Black Womanhood" exists is laughable, the esoteric nature of such courses is as appalling as their dubious content. Take, for example, Jewish Studies 15, "Jews, Sexuality, and Queerness." According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, gay Jews compose approximately 0.1% of the population. With his course selection, where is our theoretical student to encounter any big ideas, to wrestle with concepts that are equally applicable to us all in light of our common humanity?
That students share common academic experiences so that they are able to exchange ideas on the same intellectual playing field is an absolute necessity. Thus, it's essential that the "Great Issues" course returns, as well as that all freshmen read the same book. However, while I may have doubts, reading Virginia Woolf one year would probably be every bit as beneficial as reading Milton the next.
This isn't to say that all books are created equal—I, Rigoberta Menchu; The Pelican Brief; and Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul would probably all, for different reasons, be inappropriate required freshman reading. Similarly, there is clearly something wrong with the course selection of our fictional sociology major, even if it were a shared experience for the freshman class.
In his seminal work The Idea of a University, Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote that an institution of high learning that fulfills its purpose "educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it." What that truth is, of course, is intricately connected to his theology, but the point remains. Dartmouth should aspire to something more than giving students a vague knowledge of a hodgepodge of subjects; indeed, to nothing less than cultivating the desire for truth Newman describes.
How students are thus trained may very well change over time—no one would seriously argue that all students should now demonstrate mastery of Latin—and Dartmouth's current mission in that regard should be a matter of community discussion. But if it is "to construct black womanhood," I would rather know that and attend elsewhere than be subject to the vagaries of a specialized, dissolute, and contradictory curriculum.
The College must crystallize how it will train its students vis-Ã -vis the pursuit of truth. Put another way, Ronald Reagan once said that an "educated man or woman [is] one who could, if necessary, refound his or her civilization," and Dartmouth must decide of what, exactly, our civilization consists.
Fortunately, now is an ideal time for such an inventory. The victory of petition Trustee candidates Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88 [see interviews on page six and seven, respectively] will undoubtedly lead to a widespread examination of priorities. In addition to questioning course oversubscription in popular departments and the balance between research and teaching, the new Trustees should endeavor to bring unity and meaning to Dartmouth's curriculum.
In the mean time, diversity should dictate that it at least be possible for students to obtain some semblance of a core education—Western Studies, anyone? In all seriousness, some sort of program in cultural traditions and a voluntarily "Great Books" series might be a good start. All those students who were so embarrassed when taking our survey would be encouraged to attend.