Now…and Afterwards of WWII

At the alumni luncheon in the gymnasium on February 23 President Dodds told the nine hundred guests what Princeton’s job is during the winning of the war, what it will be after peace. His talk forms the basis for the accompanying article. Next week we will print “The Impact of War on the Undergraduate” as it was described at the luncheon by Francis L. Broderick ’43.

Overnight with the news of Pearl Harbor college students, as everyone else, had to make radical readjustments in their plans. The majority knew that they faced fairly certain call in the not too distant future. They had to weight the natural urge to leave at once for war service against the recognized need for men with special training and more advanced education.

Since modern warfare calls for the most complete organization of national strength in every line of endeavor, a stampede of quick departures from the campus would have been most unfortunate and contrary to announced policies of the government. The first job of the administration following December 7 was, therefore, to find out as quickly as possible what Washington wanted the University and its students to do. High officials were consulted and one week after the declaration of war, plans were made public at an official mass meeting of undergraduates, the first held on the campus in many years. As I came home from Alexander Hall, which had been packed with an audience that overflowed into the ambulatory, I rejoiced in the knowledge that the confidence which I had repeatedly expressed in the younger generation, when so many oldsters were bemoaning their lack of moral stamina, was now established beyond a shadow of doubt. In that meeting there was little romantic patriotism in the air. There was something better — loyalty to America and firmness. 

The task of college authorities in recent weeks has not been to preach courage and self-sacrifice. It has been, rather, by calm counsel to urge thoughtful consideration as to when and how each individual may make his best contribution to the national cause, to inform him of the opportunities open and to help him find the right post when he has decided what he wants to do…

Even before our accelerated program of study was announced, undergraduate opinion clearly demonstrated its demand for opportunities to speed up work for the degree. A meeting of the junior class revealed this sentiment by an overwhelming vote. To the credit and honor of Princeton students it can be said that at no time was there a request for a debased degree representing a reduced quality or quantity of work. The undergraduates asked us: “Can’t you get us ready faster?” and we knew in our hearts that we could. 

Under our wartime program we are adhering to normal winter and spring terms and are not adopting a trimester plan as have some other universities. This is because we want to preserve the heart of the Princeton plan of study with its emphasis upon independent work, the comprehensive examination and the senior thesis. We view with disfavor any further contraction of the time and work for a college degree than that which we have adopted. Some other institutions, we know, are accelerating to two years or to two years and six months, but we believe that there are grave dangers in a too great speed-up. If we are not careful there may develop a competitive race for acceleration which will leave unfortunate scars on American education…

THERE ARE LIMITS

If a general education at the college level is thought of as an unfolding process in which the individual attains new powers of self-education, creative thinking, original analysis and reporting — and not just as an accumulation of credits — it is clear that you can’t accelerate your program beyond certain definite psychological and biological limits. But if you center your emphasis either on an arithmetical summation of classroom hours or on passing a series of examinations, there is little to choose between a four-year course and a three-year course, or even a two-year course. If these are made the ultimate tests, the number of units to be earned or the schedule of examinations to be hurdled can be lengthened or shortened at will to meet any taste. Obviously there is no divine revelation fixing the units for an A.B. degree at 120 or of setting a string of examinations to be taken as rapidly as a boy with a quick memory and high verbal aptitude can pass them. This is true of such systems no matter how revolutionary the language which their advocates use to describe them…

Too great acceleration is self-defeating for two principal reasons:

The first is that nobody can play his brain on a subject in an original and constructive manner until he comes to possess a working knowledge of the subject. Princeton’s upperclass plan of study is based on this proposition. We have proved abundantly that when a student acquires a basic fund of knowledge in a field of concentration he will begin to think originally in it if encouraged and shown how to do so. I contend that there is a technique and habit of originally thought that can be inculcated by example if appropriate methods of instruction are employed. However, this means not only that there must be a sufficient time allowance for the general introductory work of freshman and sophomore years, but also an additional period for concentration in a particular field of knowledge and for training and practice in the standards of scholarship.

Senior year at Princeton, in which independent and comprehensive study is emphasized, is the culmination of the college career and almost twice as valuable as any preceding year. The Princeton plan of upperclass study is the capsheaf of our program and we have no intention of accelerating to a point which will seriously impair it.

TIME FOR MATURING

The second factor setting a limit to the speed of acceleration is the time necessary for maturing. The intellectual process should run parallel with emotional and biological development. One’s intellect does not operate in a vacuum, but as part of a personality in which emotional and irrational urges play a large part. Sufficient time for social adjustment and emotional education is therefore an indispensable consideration.

Evidence is not available to establish the optimum period for a college course as accurately as industry can often establish the optimum schedule for hours of labor. But we do know that there is a point beyond which the acceleration of the college course cannot go without seriously jeopardizing those elements which contribute most to the development of intellectual competence, initiative, self-reliance and qualities of leadership. A period of intellectual and emotional maturing is essential, and the process cannot be carried on under an unlimited forced draft.

When we return to more usual conditions after the war we must not forget the importance of some leisure in the college experience. True, it is easy to confuse leisure and loafing, and a great many college students have habitually done so. But this does not establish that normally hours of leisure are not desirable in college years. It is in such hours that a young man’s personality can grow. The author of the Ecclesiasticus truthfully tells us that “The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity for leisure.”

I hope that what I have been saying will not be understood as defending “business as usual” at Princeton in a world aflame. I am, it is true, arguing for the preservation of our standards and against debasing the quality of our work on grounds of the emergency; because to do so will not help either the emergency or the student. Better two years of sound education before being called even if it is unadorned by a degree than two years of hasty, ill-digested teaching and forced growth certified by a thinly gilded diploma that will tarnish in the hands of its recipient. Acceleration should not mean dilution…

We must, furthermore, take care that in our rightful zeal for the liberal arts, we do not retreat to an ivory tower position which is self-defeatist in that it is out of scale in a war in which the future existence of the liberal arts itself is at stake. True, the liberal arts deal with timeless values and our success in war will be affected by our awareness of these values and the danger they are in. We believe in a liberal education and because we do believe in it we must be willing to suffer grief and disappointment gladly, as we see our cherished plans interrupted and course elections diverted to less civilized but more urgent skills of warfare, if we are to have a world in which our ideas and values are to prosper in the end. 

OUT TO WIN

Princeton is not doing business as usual, as you all know. As the emergency develops we are moving willingly to a war basis. Princeton is all out in this war, and there is no sacrifice she will not make for victory. She knows that she must make adjustments, how great only the future can tell, in program of study and subjects taught. She doesn’t pretend to have a priority, over the military needs of the country, on the time of her students. She asks only to be allowed to preserve in what she does the quality and standards which she has attained, because she can best serve by refusing to validate shoddy goods.

And now, an observation or two about the American college in the post-war era:

While there is no reason to be discouraged about the future, the Princeton scheme of a college education will face some fresh opposition in the reconstruction days after the war and it is wise to be aware of it. The principle of lower standards of admission and a truncated college course will be sanctified by some influential institutions. Some lost ground will have to be recovered. But this has happened before in our history. If we are alert and deserving we shall have little to fear.

It is important to realize that the issues which I am about to describe were emerging irrespective of the war. Post-war conditions will throw them into sharper outline.

Cuyler Hall

Many of us do not realize to what degree the American college has come to occupy a unique position among the educational systems of the world. Higher education in America has developed the pattern of a four-year general education as preparatory to vocational specialization. Originally, it is true, our colleges were strongly vocational in that they educated for a profession or a career of statesmanship for the well-to-do. But, as the country grew and prospered, the value of the liberal arts experience became recognized for those who were not preparing for a profession, as well as for those who were; and we became a nation of colleges.

In contrast to this position of the American college, the universities on the continent of Europe remained essentially vocational in that they were the corridors to professional or technical careers. One’s general education, as we understood the term, was largely completed by the time of entering the university.

Will the traditional American view of college education to which Princeton adheres seem too expensive in time and money after the war to be continued on its present scale; will a tendency to abbreviate it to European dimensions arise? Some educational leaders have been urging such a change for some time and they probably feel now that they are about to enter into their inheritance. 

It is possible also that we shall come out of the war with increased public demand for a cash-value or “scientific” education. This too will be a challenge to Princeton…Colleges will also have to contend with developing pressure from the professional schools in favor of shortening the years of undergraduate preparation…

These problems will be faced and surmounted when the time for reconstruction comes. As to the enduring place of the American college in the post-war world I have not a moment’s doubt…Victory will not destroy the high sentiments and aspiration of human beings; on the contrary the world counter-revolution now beginning against the ideas of Hitler will release them in renewed vigor. Because it serves these sentiments and aspirations, the American college need not be fearful about its future.

The founders of the Colonial college believed ardently that education must be widespread if the blessings of liberty were to endure. We, their offspring, will not reject this faith. In the ultimate victory and afterwards the American college will play its role, with Princeton a prominent figure on the stage. May she persevere in the knowledge that if she does not yield to pressures to cheapen her art her performance will be magnificent. 

This article was originally published in the February 27, 1942 issue of PAW.