USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > Fiftieth Anniversary celebration publication, Connecticut College, 1911-1961 > Part 3
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There is the whole vast field of teaching-and I don't necessarily mean teaching in the Congo. I mean teaching in the public schools of any of our great cities, or in some of our Southern states, or in Alaska, or even Hawaii, if you're adventurous. But any of the great public schools needs teachers. There is a tremendous field and some- thing that needs doing. Then there is the whole rapidly expanding field of science whether you think of it in medical terms or in terms of counseling or psychiatric care; there are many, many aspects to this including the excitement of research. Then there is another huge field in government service; and there is the valuable contribution which educated women can make to the healthy conduct of com- munity life. Here are the things that need doing in the world you
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live in, and you ought to think about this as you think about your choice of major.
And then just one more thing. I have said this before, too. You will all live a very long time, and no man can really learn enough in his youth to last him through his old age. So I would say to you, don't confuse your major with mastery of a subject. The study of your major field will give you a basis for lifetime concern with it, whether that concern is professional or whether it becomes avoca- tional. In summary I would say, regardless of your present grades in that field, take the field in which you are interested. Consider your responsibility to the society which has given you such great privileges, and remember that you will live a long time. You will live through times which are difficult and times which cannot use neurotic, self- centered, frightened women who demand privileges they have not earned. So choose a major you can like, a major that will give you discipline and work, a major that will give you a chance to be use- ful in your society and something in addition to feed on through the very long years of your, I'm sure, very long lives.
Now we're all aware of the fact that a choice like this is a difficult choice for you to make; and you will have, and have had, oppor- tunities to talk it over with faculty advisers, with deans, and with your fellow students. You must also have drawn some experiences from your classrooms during the past semester and the present semester, and particularly from courses which we have included under the General Group. You will all, I hope, have acquired some sense of how much there is to learn. It was said not so long ago that the size of human knowledge, that is the sheer amount of it, doubles every seven to nine years, and that I think is probably more or less true. Think then just for a moment of what a task it is to be a teacher. New facts are continually being discovered, new interpretations are being presented; or even the mere progress of time itself in a self- conscious civilization like ours offers continually more to be taught to the young who cannot have experienced it themselves. And we know, fortunately I think for aesthetic reasons, that the brain does not increase and does not double in size every seven to nine years.
We are therefore faced with the fact that we must choose out of this increasingly tremendous amount of knowledge. We have to choose those things that seem most important for understanding, and we must keep choosing all the time. It's said, of course, and I think rightly, that no investment counselor will recommend your putting
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money into any firm which is not turning back a substantial portion of its profits into research. Now college doesn't have profits. About the only thing it can turn into research is time, and I can assure you and any faculty member can assure you that this College is putting more than its share of time into a concern with educational research and continual examination of its course offerings and of its educa- tional program. Some time ago, Connecticut College reached a decision as to the areas of study which would be elected by all stu- dents. We have called these the General Group, and we believe that this General Group gives you the best understanding or at least in- troduction to understanding of the Western tradition into which you were born, as distinct from the tradition of the East. We also be- lieve that that General Group gives you an introduction to the varied capacities of the human spirit, no matter in what civilization they may appear.
We are all the time, however, concerned that we present this aspect of our educational program and indeed all the others-the major field and the elective courses-to you under circumstances which provide the best possible conditions for learning and for teaching. Now as adults we are sensible of the many varied pressures which modern life imposes, and we know that as you grow older these will increase and you will have to learn to choose and to live with them. We are sensible of these pressures, but we are even more aware of the urgent necessity for good education in this country if the world posi- tion of America is to be maintained. Then perhaps, more locally, we are convinced that certain colleges in this country must take a lead in providing the very highest quality of educational programs. We are agreed further that this kind of quality does not come necessarily from breadth of offering. We believe it depends on the intensity of learning, on the depths and complexities which are revealed to stu- dents through the teaching process. Therefore after many months of discussion the faculty has decided to make certain basic changes in our curriculum pattern here.
We believe that these changes will make our teaching more effec- tive and that they will make your learning less superficial, that they will permit you a more secure grasp of understanding on the college courses you elect. We are quite aware that such learning under any circumstances is very difficult to achieve, but we hope that by these changes we are making real learning more possible. We know we are not making it easier.
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Now I know that this seems a radical change to Connecticut Col- lege; and I would only like to suggest to you that, if it is radical for us, actually in the whole area of American education it is not so radical an idea. As a matter of fact, it was in effect as long ago as 1924 when I entered Radcliffe College. It has been in effect at other women's colleges, too. Most of you probably know that it is in effect not only at Harvard and Radcliffe but at Pembroke and Bryn Mawr.
I've said that the faculty believe it is a good plan, and I think you will find it a good plan as you come to work under it. I cannot and I do not pretend that it is easier. I do assure you that you will get more satisfaction out of working under this system because a higher quality of work can be expected from you and you can offer it. Next year we all have to understand will be one of experiment. Experiments I rather like and I hope you will. We expect that the excitement of working on a new program like this may bring up other good ideas for increasing the educational power of our programs here. We be- lieve indeed that these changes will be good for all of us, both for the faculty and for the students.
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Charge To The Seniors Commencement, June 11, 1961
ROSEMARY PARK, President
W ILL THE MEMBERS of the Class of 1961 please rise? As President of the College, I now have the honor of welcoming you into the Alumnae Association of this College. Aside from all your other virtues, you have the distinction, as you know, of being our Senior Class in the year when the College attains its half century of existence. Fifty years, I take it, is a great age for animals, except elephants and turtles, and a respectable age for human beings; but for an institution, fifty years simply means that it is firmly established in its community and in the estimation of its friends. One might call such an institution a young adult, old enough to be responsible, young enough to experiment, and experienced enough to make sound judgments. This, I think, is your state. You are young adults with some experience, some knowledge, and some taste. As a College, we have been responsible up to now for the development of these qualities in you; but now on graduation you become yourselves the faculty, the administration, the student government of that con- tinuing education which is your life.
We are all aware, I think, that it was only an oversight that kept Aristotle from saying, "No man can learn enough in his youth to last him through a lifetime." Since Aristotle actually did not say this, I should like to quote you another authority, an authority, I venture to say, who has seldom been quoted from a Commencement platform and certainly never in a Commencement address. I understand that in a moment of illumination, and I think it was a moment of very great illumination, Mae West is reported to have said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." Now it is my earnest hope that, Miss West notwithstanding, you will always feel this way about your education. Too much of this good thing can never be anything but wonderful. It can be wonderful as a memory and as a tool for the future. As a memory it is wonderful because you have learned to know here devoted, unselfish men and women who were more con- cerned to know and to have you learn to know than they were about anything else. This June, for instance, Professor Hannah Roach of the History Department is retiring after thirty-eight years of service, and Mrs. Josephine Hunter Ray of the English Department after
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twenty-six years. You probably also know Miss Elena Misterly of the Residence Department, who is leaving us after thirty-two years on our staff. Many other members of our faculty and staff have given ten, twenty, thirty years of service to this College. In a country where one person in five changes his address every year, I think it is important to have known at some time in your life that this kind of unselfish devo- tion in one place is possible.
The memory of such disinterestedness, the memory of a com- munity like this College which is concerned wholly for things other than the immediate gain, can be important for you as you go into a world which knows and sometimes admires quite different standards and values. You will realize, as you analyze this memory of yours about the College, that all of us here were concerned with something which was greater than ourselves. I will call it for the moment, this something, truth. And I would remind you, in parting, of that wonderful and probing question of Friedrich Nietzsche:
How much truth can a mind bear? How much truth can you dare?
Wieviel Wahrheit ertrÃĪgt, Wieviel Wahrheit wagt ein Geist?
This truth is not a hidden treasure which we find and then pos- sess; rather it is the goal of a life, whether that life be the life of an institution or of a person. So I hope this memory of us may become for you a tool, a tool with which you can meet and fashion the lives you are about to lead. And on this Commencement Day as we bid you farewell with affectionate regard and with high hopes, we send you all best wishes for success and happiness.
Now I would like to speak a word to this audience which, like the class, is present with us on an historic occasion, for this year, as I have said, marks the completion of the College's half century of existence. Fifty years ago this College was called into being by the imaginative concern of a group of men and women in this state who wished to advance the higher education of women. The labours and the visions of these early friends have borne fruit in the beautiful College which surrounds us today. Their interest has been amply and richly matched by the dedication of succeeding Boards of Trustees, faculties, and administrations.
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But no institution, however fortunate, is ever quite immune to the problems of its own time. For private colleges like this, the years have brought increasing financial worries, in spite of the careful, not to say parsimonious, form of administration. So the question kept recurring in our councils, "Can an institution like this which has done so much with the gifts entrusted to it through the years count on continuing support through these difficult times?"
A vigorous but a theoretical affirmative was given to this question by the Board of Trustees when it established the 50th Anniversary Fund three years ago. This fund, to mark our Fiftieth Anniversary, was to raise $3,100,000 by today for salaries, scholarships, library facili- ties and books, and the completion of our physical education building, the Crozier-Williams Center. It was agreed at the outset that this was to be "live money," to be spent over the next ten to fifteen years. Up to today there have been 5,951 contributors to this Fund from 50 states and 14 foreign countries. It is in effect the very largest single project which was ever undertaken by this College.
The magnificent cooperation of the Alumnae of the College has been the most important single factor in the Fund program. They have acted as Chairmen of our 34 area groups in 20 states and have served on area committees which had a total membership of 750 people. And as if this were not enough, they have contributed them- selves in gifts and pledges, $1,096,109, which is more than 35% of the total fund. The participation of graduates of this College in the Fund surpasses the participation of the graduates of any other college in any similar fund with which I am acquainted. At the moment, the participation of our graduates in this Fund amounts to 72.3% of the total group. This is an extraordinary and a heartwarming figure and could only have come about through the intensest work on the part of the Alumnae organization.
To the Trustees of the College a continuing debt is owed; but again, and on this occasion, their generosity has constituted a tre- mendous vote of confidence in this institution over which they pre- side. More than 11% of the total has come from this small group of generous and far-seeing men and women. The College, as you know, was originally an effort confined primarily to the state of Connecti- cut. Though this campaign has brought gifts from every state in the Union, it is with particular pleasure that I can record our special gratitude to the community in which the College has its home, South- eastern Connecticut. Under the very able leadership of the Secretary
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of the Board of Trustees, Mrs. Mary Morrisson and her committee, Southeastern Connecticut has had the largest number of contribu- tors of any area, 645. And this area has raised the second largest amount of any area, exceeding its large quota for a total of $245,000- indeed a most extraordinary achievement. None of this magnificent report would have been possible without the cooperation of business concerns in many areas, but I wish particularly to speak again of Southeastern Connecticut, where 116 businesses have generously sup- ported our Anniversary Fund.
In summary, then, it will not surprise this audience at this point to have me say that I was able to report at the meeting of the Board of Trustees held an hour ago that the College at this moment had reached its goal and that our Anniversary Fund now stands at $3,105,- 000. And let me add a little P.S .; there are some gifts that are still coming in. This has been a tremendous achievement for this College. The confidence in our future which this success represents must be, I think, as substantial as the satisfaction of the Founders of the College when they saw the first building actually completed. As President I should like to express now most humbly and yet with a great sense of satisfaction our gratitude to parents and friends, to alumnae and trustees, to students and faculty who have worked together to assure the future of this great institution. The pride which our most recent alumnae, the Class of 1961, will take in the College has been in- creased by the success of this day, and I cannot imagine a more auspicious occasion on which to celebrate one's Commencement. May it prove, over the years, to have been for all of us an historic occasion.
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The Problematic Inheritance Of The West
F. EDWARD CRANZ, Professor of History
W E LIVE in a time when what we do in this country may well be decisive for the future of the West and of the Western tradi- tion, when what we do within the West may well be decisive for the future of all other civilizations. And yet while we speak com- fortably as proud possessors of our West and of our Western tradi- tion, I question whether in most cases we have any very clear under- standing of what these large concepts mean. If we did have such a clear understanding, I wonder whether we should find the West and the Western tradition such comforting possessions. Possibly we are not the possessors but the possessed; possibly our inheritance is not comforting at all; possibly even, it threatens to destroy us.
But before I turn to the main argument, which is an attempt to look a little more carefully at our Western inheritance, a few pre- liminary observations are in order. First of all, while any discussion of an inheritance or a tradition involves looking to the past, such a discussion has also a contemporary aspect. The past which has not affected us or which we have consciously rejected can hardly be called our tradition, unless in a merely hypothetical sense. And my own interest today is primarily in the contemporary aspect. I believe that the past has in various ways led us to a present which we cannot escape, and I am concerned not so much with our failure to emulate this or that greatness of the past as I am with the inexorable present predicament within which that past has placed us, willy-nilly. In other words, I shall be concerned with the is rather than with a pos- sible ought to be of our tradition, and I am trying to limit myself to what we cannot deny about the Western tradition because we are it.
But is there any such common Western tradition or inheritance which we all share? We are citizens of different nations, hold dif- ferent faiths, and come from different villages or cities. Would not each of these groups, and particularly the various faiths, define the West differently and in the light of its own particular tradition? Would there be very much left at the end as a common tradition, except perhaps a general agreement to speak respectfully in public
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of the Graeco-Roman and of the Judaeo-Christian achievements? To some extent it is certainly true that we are determined by our own particular and special traditions, and my own standpoint here is that of Protestant Christianity. Nevertheless I don't think this is the whole answer, and I shall argue that there is a common basis of Western experience which is independent of and antecedent to these particular national, religious, and local traditions. All of us, Protes- tant, Catholic, Jew, and, for that matter, atheist and Moslem, if we are also Westerners, live in a Western "world," and it is in the area of such concepts as "world" that I think we find the Western tradi- tion and inheritance which binds us all. I shall be arguing that from a historical standpoint the origins of the West are decisively con- nected with Christianity, but I also believe that in the modern world the Western tradition has been separated from Christianity and may be said to bind Christian and non-Christian equally. It is partly accident but also a good illustration of this fact that the few witnesses I shall choose from the most recent period are not avowedly Christian at all.
Let us now look directly at the development of the Western tradi- tion, even though it is evident that in the time available, we shall be able to do this only in the broadest and simplest terms.
THERE are three basic components: 1. Greece (or Graeco-Roman civilization). 2. Israel. 3. Christianity. We shall first look at Greece and Israel together.
Greece and Israel held world-views which were in many ways dif- ferent and opposed. On the Greek side, there was the dominant con- cept of the cosmos as a great eternal order of gods and men within which the individual Greek was able to find his place and his destiny through his own efforts. In contrast, on the Jewish side, there was the insistence on the total gulf between creator and creature, on the absolute need for the revelation of God's will, and on the law of God, revealed through Moses, in the practice of which the individual Jew was to find his place and his destiny in God's Israel.
But over against these differences, there were also certain key points of similarity. In the first place, both Greece and Israel insisted that the final serious decision, the final commitment of a man, had to be his own; whether or not he needed revelation to achieve it, no one else, no group and no society could do it for him.
For Israel, one could look at the conclusion of Job: "I had heard by hear-say of you, but now mine eyes have seen you. I therefore
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retract entirely. I repent over earth and ashes."1 Or there is the promise of Jehovah in the New Covenant. "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all of them know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah XXXI, 33, 34). Job's triumph is that he has passed beyond hearsay and has seen for himself; the great promise of the New Covenant is that no one need rely on anyone else's teaching, for each shall know for himself.
These same affirmations are also central in the very different con- text of Greece. One might look for example at Book X of Plato's Republic (617 DE) and the speech of Lachesis to the souls who are about to be born and who are to choose their lives and destinies: "Short-lived souls, this is the beginning of another death-bearing cycle for the race of mortals. No demon (genius) shall choose you, but you shall choose your demon. Let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his irrevocably. Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her, he shall have more or less of her. The responsibility lies with the chooser; God is without guilt." Or, even more succinctly, there is Socrates in his Apology (38A): "The unexamined life is not humanly worth living."
And if Greece and Israel are similar in asserting that the final decisions must always be individual, they are also similar in that each admits only one context within which the decision can be made. In Greece this is the context of the eternal cosmos; in Israel it is the context of the gulf between creator and creature and of God's Law. Both Israel and Greece provide a single holy order within which man lives his whole life; outside this one answer of absolute truth, there can be nothing but error or vanity.
To take stock here, we have seen three main parts of a possible inheritance of the West from Greece and Israel. First, there are the special "world-views" of each civilization; second, there is the insist- ence of both Greece and Israel that the final decisions must be the individual's decisions; and third, there is the common assumption that these final decisions can be rightly made only within the one absolute and holy order which controls the whole of life.
But of these three parts, I believe that only one is actually a com-
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mon inheritance of the West today. We are not bound directly by the particular world-views of Israel or of Greece, by the Mosaic Law or by the eternal cosmos. We are bound as much as ever, or more, by the insistence on the absolute need for ultimately individual decisions. We are not bound, I believe, as were these civilizations, by the as- sumption that these decisions must take place within one absolute and holy order which controls the whole of life. It is this last point which is perhaps the most important and unique, surely the most difficult, part of the present Western tradition. I believe it comes ultimately out of Christianity, and to explain and to analyze this is my main task at the moment.
To state it first most briefly, Christianity contains within it two movements which are ultimately destructive of all civilizations which assert single and absolute holy orders controlling the whole of life. The first movement is secularization, which takes the holy and the sacral and then makes it worldly. The second movement is relativization, which takes absolute solutions and then relativizes them as merely possibilities among a number of equally possible solutions. And if the necessity of finally individual decisions is one inescapable part of the present Western tradition which we are, I think that secularization and relativization are equally inescapable parts.
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