Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 23. September 17, 1968

Arts degree

Arts degree

"I believe that there is clear evidence that in the minds of the community and the students the role of the university should be vocational."

A senior Australian Civil Servant. (2)

"The universities do not exist for the purpose of producing cannon-fodder for industry."

The Vice-Chancellor of Monash; in reply to the above. (3)

I am not interested in the language requirement per se. Its intrinsic value is severely limited (by the attitudes of students: as much as by its content or the manner in which it is taught). But the question of the "status in a degree", as the petition which is circulating has it, of the language requirement must inevitably bring up questions of the structure of the degree itself. We have to consider what the B.A. is and what we feel it should be

As I mentioned in the Salient letter, I believe that the B.A. degree should try to reconcile "the opposing forces of generalisation and specialisation"; and that a good Arts degree design would, as far as possible, provide "specialisation within the context of a general education." I suggest that this reconciliation could be brought about in a structure such as this:

First Year: Students would sit six papers set at a level below that of present Stage One units It would be compulsory for students to take two papers from other faculties. Other faculties, in providing for Arts students who are to take papers in one or other of their departments, would present courses in selected subjects of fairly general application. These courses would attempt to demonstrate to students what the particular approach of, say, the biologist is to his field of inquiry and would discuss any broad trends which could be discerned in the discipline involved. In this direction lies Professor Barber's suggestion for a General Physics course (4) for Arts students. This proposal is an enormously appealing one. I hope that it will be adopted, well responded-to by students, and extended into other sciences and. of course, into other faculties.

Second and Third Years: Students would specialise in one or two subjects. Any combination of subjects should clearly have some common denominator. In other words, Psychology and Sociology, and Geography and Asian Studies would be satisfactory subject combinations; but Latin and Economics, or Pure Mathematics and Political Science, would not.