SIDNEY HOOK
211
and Marx's materialism disappears in an eclectic melange-the
Quatch mit Tunke!
of dialectic totalism.
All this may appear peripheral to the problems of curricular
construction and evaluation . But it is not. The future of Stanford's
only required course depends on whether the obvious political bias
and indoctrination in the track on Europe and the Americas is to be
reflected in the other tracks . The current year is supposed to be tran–
sitional and , as in the past, changes normally would be made in the
course of events . The disquietude generated by the course on Eu–
rope and the Americas was natural because of the publicity it re–
ceived in
The Chronicle of Higher Education
and elsewhere. The
changes in no other track have been so widely heralded. Taken to–
gether with the Stanford Senate's mandate that the concepts of race ,
sex, and class are to be stressed, and the explicit provision that books
written by women and persons of color are to be added to the re–
quired reading list while nine of the fifteen core readings are to be
dropped, it was inevitable that the academic community be alarmed.
That alarm may contribute to the sobriety and reflectiveness of fur–
ther developments at Stanford .
There is one great danger not properly faced in any institution
where, as at Stanford, a course of study, devised to provide a com–
mon unitary educational experience for all students, is presented in
different sections or tracks that reflect the specialized interests stu–
dents bring
to
the course, rather than allow their intellectual interests
to develop
out
of the course. The great danger is that, despite the fact
that the core curriculum of readings is the same for all sections or
tracks, in actuality the students are really taking different courses .
The danger is intensified when each section or track can require dif–
ferent supplementary readings . (In a sense it is even true that in
almost every discipline the identical material taught by a brilliant
imaginative teacher will result in a different course from one taught
by a dull teacher who comes alive only in the laboratory, but there is
no remedy for that) .
For reasons that are quite understandable in the absence of
details (certainly not the fault of critics), some of the doubts about
the shortcomings of the CIV course may appear unfounded. Dante
will not be read in the Europe and the Americas track, but he mayor
may not be read in one or another of the seven other tracks.
On the other hand, some of the replies to critics fall back on the
truism that times change and that even if the perennial questions of
life remain the same, different books may suggest different answers.
