A Revival of General Education
T HERE is no common agreement today on what the term general education means, nor do educators agree on precisely what the objectives of a general education are. While it is impossible, then, to offer a definition of the term or a statement of these objectives that will be acceptable to all, perhaps this paper can make clear what the author thinks a general education ought to do for the student. A general education should develop the individual's capacities for living. It should stimulate and enrich his social consciousness. While it emphasizes the growth of the individual, its governing principle is the unity of human knowledge; it aims to produce not narrow specialists but wellinformed citizens who can take active roles in the affairs of their own community. Nevertheless, general education does not oppose specialization. What sensible person today would deny the value of expert training? General education tries, at the very least, to induce the student to view the world as a whole rather than as a narrow plot bounded by the limits of his particular special knowledge or skill. Ideally, all specializations should rest upon, or grow out of general culture. For example, the engineer will Drobablv be a better engineer if he knows something about the history of man, if he has some comprehension of art, if he has puzzled over philosophy and psychology. Certainly, the engineer with a developed social consciousness will be a better citizen than he would have been if his studies had all been directed toward the acquisition of professional knowledge. General education should point, though it may fall short, at the lofty mark which the poet Milton once set. "I call, therefore," he said, "Ca complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace and war." General education, which strives for a unity of human knowledge, is by no means a new ideal. In fact, it is a very old one. The revival of the ideal during the past twenty years, in both theory and practice, is largely a revival of older methods. The exponents of general education today are trying to find a system of study that will accomplish what older systems evidently did accomplish; namely, give the students a common fund of information about the world in which they live and a common attitude toward what is right and wrong, what is worthy and what unworthy of right-minded citizens.