Why Is College Dull?

Year after year, as headmasters and college deans see the process repeated they ask themselves: Why do so many prep-school graduates find the first two years of college so dull? Why do so many able students seem to fall asleep?

This week, after a year of research a special committee of six educators from three prep schools (Andover, Exeter, and Lawrenceville) and three universities (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton) finally had an answer. For most students, says the committee's report (General Education in School and College; Harvard, $2), the first two years of college are a serious waste of time."

After studying the college records of 344 Andover, Exeter, and Lawrenceville alumni the committee found that, in college the boys were merely repeating the work they had done in school. About one in every three was taking an introductory course in American history for the second time; an even larger number was repeating elementary physics, biology, or chemistry. "Furthermore, the great majority of the prospective concentrators in engineering or the physical sciences spent four years, two in school and two in college, completing elementary physics and elementary chemistry . . ." Concluded the committee: "The basic weakness . . . is a failure of the school and college to view their jobs as parts of a continuous process."

Duplication is not the only weakness the committee found. Whether repeating themselves or not, most of the boys are not getting as much out of college as they should. Superior students suffer from having to keep pace with the dull ones, and too few ever learn just what a liberal education is all about. What U.S. education needs, says the committee, is a complete overhaul of the years between the second year of prep school and the third year of college. Among its suggestions:

P: Colleges should not "devote time and energy to elementary drill . . . The secondary schools, both public and private, could and should be responsible for the 'stage of discipline' in the fundamentals . . . The pendulum has swung too far in some quarters against the older idea (abused as it was) that some things are and must be mainly 'preparatory' to others in education."

P: "In the foreign languages, the great waste . . . is that the job is very seldom finished." Henceforth every student should be required to master at least one foreign language, not just to pass some sort of reading examination, but to be able to speak and read with ease. "It is time . . . to call a halt to this retreat toward monolingual isolationism . . . It is hardly necessary . . . to elaborate the statement of Goethe that 'A man who knows only his own language does not know even that.' "

P: The teaching of mathematics is "ready for drastic alteration." Instead of the old prep-school curriculum of two years of algebra, one of plane geometry, and one of either trigonometry or solid geometry, schools should place more stress on broad mathematical principles. They should trim away some of the excess fat, condense such topics as complex numbers and logarithmic solutions of triangles in favor of the more enlightening study of calculus and statistics.

P: In literature, schools and colleges should eliminate the duplication found on their reading lists. But it is the school's job to cover the "fundamentals of our literary heritage . . . Without familiarity with the Bible, classical mythology, and great epic and legendary material, intelligent reading at the college level is exceedingly difficult."

P: Whatever his field, the able student should be made to travel at a swifter pace, and if he can cover eight years of work in seven, he should be encouraged to do so. It is time to break the current "academic lockstep" and to make students stretch their minds by plunging into advanced work. "With all that there is to learn and all that there is for eager men to do, it is nothing short of wicked to let our better students go to sleep."

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