ARGUMENTS
421
A MODEST PROPOSAL
Daniel Bell's
The Reforming of General
Education~
is a
proposal to hold the line on what is known as general education, i.e.,
a broad, amateur knowledge of the culture of the West. Admittedly,
Bell's book is a rear-guard action, a shoring-up, and is limited by the
fact that it is specifically addressed to the problems of Columbia Col–
lege although it takes constant side-glances at Harvard and Chicago,
other traditional bastions of general education.
At the risk of distortion, and certainly at the sacrifice of nuance
(of which there is much), I shall first set forth my sense of the main
drift of the argument or pedagogical scheme. According to Bell, the
secondary schools should pack the student with information, especially
in history and anthropology, so as to leave the college free to concen–
trate on conceptualization. General education in the college should begin
at the beginning, i.e., with Greek and Roman history.
It
should provide
a "common learning"; a knowledge of and feeling for the Western
tradition; and provide an antidote to intellectual fragmentation.
If
there
is no longer any single tradition or "past" in the sense that there was
for John Stuart Mill or Jonathan Swift or John Milton, then at least
the modern student can be introduced to the "idea" of tradition or the
past. The humanities and history should nourish or make flourish the
undergraduate imagination, while the physical and social sciences should
introduce him to the conceptual grounds of knowledge. There should
1 THE REFORMING OF GENERAL EDUCATION. By Daniel Bell.
Columbia University Press. $6.95.
