Educating the Individual

W E LIVE in an age of rapid historical transformation. All over the world, old institutions, old traditions, and old ways of life are either disintegrating or being outmoded. Our principal task is the training of youth for citizenship and leadership in a democratic society in a new world. How best can this be done? Can it be accomplished through a system of free electives? Or can the goal be attained by exposing the student to a rigidly prescribed program of study covering his entire college course? Is specialization in a narrow field the answer? Are the methods employed at Bard, Antioch, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence the surest way to produce the kind of citizens we want and need; citizens who have broad perspective, a critical and constructive approach to life, standards of value by which man can live nobly, a deep sense of responsibility for the welfare of their fellows, who are persons of integrity easily motivated to action in the cause of individual freedom, social justice, and international peace, who will use their leisure in ways creative and not corruptive, and who have capacity, as Barbara Jones well puts it in her book, Bennington College,' to go on learning throughout life, adapting themselves to change without losing conviction

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