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to challenge lecturers and books, more critical and resilient.” At the same time these same students were only interested in learning generalizations, not facts, which led the students to have “a large amount of intellectual arrogance” for which they needed “to be taught some humility.” Hutchinson blamed “the general courses in the College, where whole civilizations are set up and knocked down within a few days, although the College denies this charge. Students are interested in studying the past only as a series of problems, without reference to time, space and background.”137 Another critical problem was that the New Plan “actually squeezes out the teacher. With syllabi, optional class attendance, etc., the teacher is reduced in status, becomes merely a walking bibliography.” There was broad agreement on the part of all interviewed that, as Louis Wirth put it, “as they now stand our 201 courses fail to synthesize the social subject matter of the social sciences and probably cannot be sufficiently modified (as long as they are given by separate departments) to satisfy the need for a well-articulated and integrated general training in the social sciences.”138 Wirth’s statement begged the question of whether the faculty could actually imagine and agree upon a common set of assumptions as to what constituted nondepartmentally based social sciences. The challenge of imagining how one might “integrate” social sciences via interdisciplinary or comparative course work for College juniors and seniors then preoccupied the committee, resulting in numerous memoranda and position papers for and against. The debates in the committee itself were vigorous. The discussions inevitably ranged over a wide array of topics that were not very related,
137. “Sub-Committee on Curriculum,” January 29, 1935, p. 6, ibid. 138. Wirth to Redfield, undated [January 1935], ibid.
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