U.S. GENERAL EDUCATION

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27165, 8 October 1953, Page 9

U.S. GENERAL EDUCATION

Professor Havighurst Gives Background TREND AWAY FROM WORK BY “ BRUTE FORCE ” ?n non ma u 4116 United States had a < ? 00 horses and 500,000 university students—a ratio of 40 to one. In 194 Q Rnhon- t V T as -°? e to one - Professor ff°? er ) J- Havighurst, of the Univera S ag ?’ c this as the best single fact to indicate 25 years’ change oi emphasis from work done by brute SSL? by the trained intellect, when he spoke at Canterbury University College on Monday evening. • I ‘~'S cu Pational changes also showed tne trend, he said. Comparing employpercentages for males in 1880 and 1940 he gave the following table: — agriculture, forestry, and mining, 1880, -? er 4. c ? nt » 1940 ’ 23 5 Per cent.; manufacturing, 19.7 per cent., 24.3 per cent.; professions, 2.5 per cent.. 4.3 per cent.; government service, 1.4 per cent., 42. per cent About 3 per cent, of young people ?21S red S oll c ge hi 1900, 15 per cent, in 1940, and about 20 per cent in 1952, Havighurst said. All these figures were given as a Background to a commentary on the development bf “general education” in the post-high school system of training in 4 the United States. “Every human institution arises in response to needs, and in analysis we can discuss social, historical, and intellectual origins,” Professor Havignurst said. It was social origins which ne would traverse as an introduction to an address next week on the colleges tackling the problem of general education.

Goals of Society American society could be said to have four main goals—productivity, democracy, geographical and economic mobility, and opportunity, Professor Havighurst said. Mechanisation had increased productivity enormously, real incomes had improved, juvenile ! a “° ur , ad almost disappeared, and in 1939 only 30 per cent, of the university age group were working compared with 63 per cent, in 1910. Democratic ideals demanded a wide spread of formal education and the conception grew that anybody intending to occupy a middle-class position must take a college degree. This qualification was calculated to give men both mobility and opportunity. The equivalent group of girls went to college “mainly to fit themselves to marry these men,” Professor Havighurst said amid laughter. In effect the college had become for them a finishing school (perhaps leading to some occupation) but generally keeping the girls intellectually and socially abreast of their male companions. “At any rate all this is how going to college has been rationalised as in keeping with the goals of American society,” he added. Profesor Havighurst then gave a detailed comparison of the socioeconomic groupings of students attending four types of American college—a cornbelt church college, a metropolitan junior college, an “Ivy League” (top-rank) university college, and a big mid-western state college.

Purpose of Universities k A description was also given of representative colleges (undergraduate colleges as distinct from their graduate schools) and the objects they generally served:—Harvard University to train people for business leadership; Chicago University to train for intellectual leadership; Sarah Lawrence College, New York, to give women modem liberal intellectual training; Colgate College, Rochester, to train men for the ordinary businesses and professions; Michigan State College, to provide training in agriculture, home science, and agriculture and, in special schools, in pure science, medicine, and other fields; Pasadena Junior College, Los Angeles, to serve young people not ready to leave home for the higher education of the State or other uiversifies; St. John’s College, Annapolis, to give conservative intellectual training. Each of these had a major interest in general education, Professor Havighurst Raid, mentioning that next week he would discuss their curricula. All of them had different ideas on how it should be handled but they would agree that general education was not aimed at vocational preparation but at making better citizens by developing critical intelligence capable of being applied in many fields, moral character, citizenship, intellectual unity and communion of mind in a complex cosmopolitan society, and equalising opportunity for socioeconomic advancement. There was another feature which might not be admitted but general education was- also considered a useful means of taking custody of youth in times of recession or unemployment, Profesor Havighurst said.