All the Worst Points

On Saturday evening, April 11th, for a group of S.C.M. Vic and Training College Students, Dr. Coleman pulled a few Canadian holes in the University, and they proved remarkably familiar. Dr. Coleman's complaints were gathered from English, Dutch and American sources—but mainly from the U.S.A. where both faults, their investigation (and it was implied, everything) are gone in for in a big way. The four major faults of the modern university, as set out by a recent American Commission are: 1. Over-specialization. 2. Lack of co-operation between student and staff. 3. Unsatisfactory relations between the University and Community. 4. The lack of a fundamental basis or unity in University life and aims. Approximately the same views were reached in Holland during the Occupation by small allied groups of illicit students meeting to discuss the reform of the students' approach to the University which had formerly meant only a materially profitable training ground for a young man entering the professions. Today, unfortunately, as war-inspired vitality dies down. Dutch students are for the most part slipping back to this view, common place in all Universities including our own. The question of over-specialisation was treated with its implications, and examples of attempts made to overcome it, such as the introduction of five arts units into our L.L.B. course, subjects to be worked through as rapidly as possible so that the Law Student may begin his real work of "Law." The same attitude prevails among American students who must spend two years acquiring general culture out of the six required for training as the general medical practitioner, or a similar proportion of their studies in other courses. Such reforms, even if their aim is unappreciated, do tend to guard against that type of specialist encouraged in Nazi Germany, as being very useful in his work, but incapable of forming a balanced critical judgment of the society in which he occupied a well-understood but well-defined slot.