Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872–1964

5. “A New College with a New Idea,” 1925–1928

5 “A New College with a New Idea” 1925–1928 133 I n january of 1925, Meiklejohn’s long-awaited article, “A New College: Notes on a Next Step in Higher Education,” appeared in Century magazine. “What can be said,” he asked, “in favor of the establishment of a New College? I find a desire for it, a belief in it, from one side of the country to the other. It is active in the minds of many of the best teachers and many of the best students in our colleges.”1 Indeed, by the mid-1920s, the spirit of reform was alive and well in American higher education . Dozens of experiments had already begun, and dozens more were on the drawing board. Bennington College in Vermont and Sarah Lawrence in New York were pioneering new forms of artistic education for women, while Deep Springs College in California started a rugged new work-study program for a small community of men. Reed in Oregon and Swarthmore in Pennsylvania introduced honors programs with more rigorous and unified courses of study for undergraduates. Rollins College in Florida initiated a striking new “conference plan” of individualized instruction , while Black Mountain in North Carolina sponsored innovative arts and humanities programs for adults. The Claremont Colleges in California (eventually Pomona, Pitzer, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and the Claremont Graduate School) and the all-black Atlanta Consortium in Georgia (Spelman, Morehouse, Morris Brown, Clark Atlanta , and the Atlanta University) created educational cooperatives with separate schools contributing to a larger institutional whole.2 By the time Meiklejohn’s plan for a new college appeared in Century in 1925, the idea of educational experimentation garnered considerable support in colleges and universities nationwide. “The liberal education of American youth is today a task so fascinating in its quality and of such tremendous importance in its consequences,” he declared, “that life in a community attempting it cannot fail to be thrilling and worthwhile.”3 Stressing the experimental nature of his new college proposal, Meiklejohn described its two principal goals. First, in an attempt to overcome the failures and inadequacies of the elective system, it would aim to develop a more unified curriculum for the first two undergraduate years. Second, in an attempt to create a more cohesive and cooperative learning community , it would aim to develop closer instructional relationships between teachers and students. As he sketched out the details of his college, Meiklejohn explained that its course of study would be entirely prescribed and its method of instruction would be primarily tutorial. Above all, the new college would be small, with no more than thirty-five teachers and three hundred students. “It seems to me the first essential,” he asserted, “that the attempt be made to form and place a faculty that will become a coherent , self-determining body, definitely committed to a well-formulated purpose and directing all its efforts, individual and corporate, to the realization of that purpose. It is for the sake of this coherence that we chiefly need smallness.” In keeping with the goals of unity and coherence, Meiklejohn ’s new college would not divide its program into discrete or disconnected disciplines. Rather, it would attempt to study human civilization as an organic and living whole. “We would have the freshman attempt acquaintance with an ancient civilization as a whole, and the sophomore with a modern one in the same way,” Meiklejohn explained, “and our principle is fairly clear. The college is trying to get the student to make for himself an understanding of himself and the society in which he is living. We wish him to know this not simply in some of its aspects, but as a total human undertaking.”4 Acknowledging that the choice of civilizations to study would, on some level, be arbitrary, Meiklejohn suggested a twoyear curriculum based on ancient Athens in the first year and modern America in the second. Halfway through his article, Meiklejohn described the tutorial relationship he envisioned for teachers and students in his new college. “Each member of the faculty could take five or six students under his guidance. . . . He could hold conferences with them, criticize their reports of work, discuss their difficulties, suggest lines to follow, and challenge and direct their thinking.” In an ideal sense, teachers and students would m a d i s o n , 1 9 2 5 – 1 9 3 2 134 be coequal partners in the learning...