University of Virginia Library

Tinkering, Not Reforming

When the College Faculty at its meeting
next Tuesday acts on the curriculum changes
proposed by its Curriculum Committee, it will
be merely tinkering with a repressive and
rigidly structured system that is in dire need
of total reform. That system might best be
described as one subscribing to the theory of
"general education," a system which originated
out of administrative practicalities and
not philosophical principles and concern for
the student. It is a system which had its
beginnings in the post-World War II society
where colleges once established to provide a
liberal education found themselves transformed
into instruments of mass education.

During the war the educational system had
been used to supply the necessary intellectual
manpower for military victory. After the war
it was used to supply personnel for what one
educator termed a rapidly developing
"military-industrial-educational-social complex."
Students were now presented with an
all-requirement curriculum in which education
was reduced to a coverage of subjects while
ignoring the development of the intellect. It
was a curriculum devised to indoctrinate
students with American and Western ideals of
the post-war society; it trained students by
means of standardized blocks of knowledge.

This "general education" approach to
curriculum was to have a negative effect on a
student's educational experience and intellectual
development, especially in terms of the
approach educators now took to structuring a
curriculum. There was really no need to
sacrifice the intellectual quality and mind-liberating
influence of a course simply because
it was meant to introduce a student to a given
area of knowledge, but this was the result of
the general education approach to teaching.

Emphasis was put on the organization and
distribution of sets of requirements in general
areas of knowledge. A student was to read
certain books, discuss them (if classes weren't
too overcrowded), write papers on them, and
take examinations on them. But in this
process the student loses sight of any purpose
in his education other than a simple rhetorical
one. Besides a mass-education curriculum
designed to expound the values of the
post-war American society, students had to
accept a curriculum which was largely a
composite of what the various departments in
the University want to have included in the
course material. The system which most
effectively administered this general compilation
of wishes was passed off as the proper
education for all undergraduates.

The curriculum was set up, then, to
provide a block of necessary material which
had to be covered before selecting a major
field. A student also had to meet certain
requirements in a major field. After demonstrating
proficiency in his field by passing
examinations, he was declared to have
completed a liberal education.

It is this "general education" curriculum
which has been inherited by students of the
University. It is doubtful that the College
faculty will do much to throw off this system
when it considers proposals stemming from
the Interim Report of its Curriculum Committee.
The changes suggested in the report do
not really entail any vast reform and, indeed,
appear to be compromising measures which
will ignore or postpone changes in areas which
could vastly improve a student's educational
experience at the University.

Ironically, the report itself gives credence
to the notion that more reform is necessary. It
states that "curricula revision should be a
continual affair" and suggests that a permanent
committee of the Faculty be charged
with the responsibility of evaluating the
curriculum. The report goes on to suggest that
such a committee might study proposals
which the present committee considered but
judged "outside the scope of its purposes as
well as beyond its resources for analysis:"

The report also makes specific recommendations
to the departments which would help
reach "the minds and interests of the
students:"

It is indeed unfortunate that the committee
felt it could not go beyond the proposals
in the interim report, for it is in the above
recommendations to departments and in the
proposals considered "outside the scope" of
the committee that any meaningful reform of
the College curriculum will begin.

But the committee does have a set of
proposals which must be acted upon and
which we have commented on previously in
these columns. In general we support most of
the changes and recommendations in the
Curriculum Committee's interim report which
were suggested by the College members of
Student Council (reported in The Cavalier
Daily, Monday, November 10). Basically the
changes and recommendations call for:

- Increasing the number of pass-fail
courses from 4 to 8, with no limit on the
number to be elected a semester.

- Exempting a student from further
language requirements if he scores 700 on his
foreign language achievement test. Students
scoring 550 or above will be required to take
only one additional semester of that language
at level six or higher.

- Lowering the foreign culture requirement
from 15 to 12 hours. No more than six
of these 12 hours can be in the field of the
major subject. (We have doubts about the
validity of a foreign language requirement at
all and feel it is being kept merely to
guarantee students to the language departments.)

- Initiating an inter-disciplinary course for
fulfilling the social studies requirement and an
inter-departmental course for fulfilling the
math-science requirement.

- Eliminating the requirement of a foreign
language course of level 35 or its equivalent
for the student choosing a University Major.

- Allowing 15 semester hours of
elective courses from other schools in the
University. No academic credit for courses
offered by ROTC.

- Waiving high school academic course
requirements if the student is capable and
otherwise qualified.

- Implementation of the Black Studies
proposals of the Black Students for Freedom.

- Implementation of a 4-1-4 academic
program. (This allows a student to pursue an
area of independent study in depth while
taking a reduced workload in the other
"semesters.")

- More seminars in each department, with
permanent seminars for first-year men.

We feel these changes and recommendations
are the absolute minimum in moving
away from the repressive curriculum which
now exists. If they can not be implemented
by next fall, we would encourage the College
faculty to pledge itself to make more
sweeping reforms next year. For until these
and other reforms are initiated, education in
the College will continue to be a "stuffing-in"
process rather than one which liberates the
student's mind and imagination through
experience in the creative arts and critical
analysis of contemporary society.