The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 44 The Educational Screen A Junior College Demonstration SAMUEL WEINGARTEN, Head Department of the Humanities Wright City Junior College Chicago, Illinois THERE have been indications recently in American edu- cation of an awareness that we have overemphasized the in- tellectual development of our students and that the proper guidance of their emotions is one of the tasks which we must face in educational plaiuiiiig. Wars are won by the arousing of men's emotions against the enemy and • by the stirring of their emotions toward the ideals for which they are fighting. The former grad- ually disappear upon the conclu- sion of hostilities; the latter should logically spend themselves in a practical concern with social reconstruction. If the emphasis that must be given to technical skills, for physical preparedness in waging a war successfully, means a neglect in educating students to derive emotional satisfaction through the appreci- ation of the arts, a post-war per- iod can easily become one in which the brutalized emo- tions of warring men find peace-time equivalents of an equally violent nature. Before our entrance into the war. Professor Harold Rugg, in analyzing the "Strains and Problems of a Depressed Society," considered one of the several major problems in American society to be the need for "sensitive awareness, heightened appreciation of beauty, and integrity of personal expression." Too fre- Cjuently, he thought, "the concept of the creative act, integrity of expression, self-cultivation, and apprecia- tion have been submerged and thrown into the back- ground by the necessity for studying social problems."' Such a condition will inevitably be more serious in the post-war period if educators permit courses in the study of the arts and in artistic and musical expression to perish or languish while the world is torn by war. Without neglecting their obligations to the war effort, educators can fulfill dieir obligations to students in their classrooms who will survive the war to live in a war-.scarred period of reconstruction. One of these obligations is the ])roviding of stimuli which will de- velop in young people tastes and interests in the arts as sources of emotional satisfaction. Most junior colleges offer courses in literary, music, and art appreciation and practice. But what percentage of the students enrolled in these institutions elect these courses? Today especially students are inclined to 1. Democracy and the Curriculum (Third Yearbook of the John Dewey Society), pp. 125-131. Studying exhibits, models, prints and other aids in the "Humanities" Room. enroll in courses in which the content seems more directly related to the war effort; the need for emo- tional adjustment through experience in the arts is certainly for them a less evident need in the present emergency. The wisdom of their instructors will be seen in the recognition of this need. In the Chicago City Junior Colleges students are required to enroll in a course in which they are introduced to experiences in aesthetic api^reciation—the Survey Course in the Humanities. In this course, attention is given to the artistic ex- pression of each of the major epochs of western cul- ture : writers, builders, sculptors, painters, and mu- sicians emerge as significant and important contributors to our cultural heritage. In the integration of literary and artistic expression with social and intellectual history, we consider each work of literature or art as an index of the total cultural complex of tbe age in which it was produced. But the educational pitfall, in this course, as in special courses in literature, art, and music is that it may became a digest of the facts about culture rather than an invitation to students to partici- pate in the understanding and a])preciation of the poem, the painting, or the symphony. The objective in a series of lectures which serve as a preface to our chronological survey of western culture is to place before the students the fundamental i)rinciples of liter- ature, art, and music. The specific illustration of these principles is emphasized when we lead our students to participate in understanding and appreciating the con-