Report of the Educational Advisory Committee to the President of Hampshire College

The Report of the Educational Advisory Committee to the President of Hampshire College was published in April 13, 1966.

Below are excerpts.

The "Image" of Hampshire College (as we have come to see it)
Hampshire College is founded on the principle that the best learning is that in which the student progressively acquires the ability to teach himself. Its faculty, its curriculum, its methods of instruction and its social atmosphere derive their meaning and purpose from its functions as an institution where education is of the first importance and where the students are committed to the examined life.

Hampshire College recruits for its faculty men and women of proven academic competence, whose research keeps them creatively abreast of their fields, but a new breed who find one of the major rewards of their research and competence in the student-teacher relationship. This faculty is small enough so that each member may know and exchange ideas with his colleagues in other disciplines. It is as much the function of the professor at Hampshire College to work with his colleagues as it is to work with his students. Hampshire College is markedly different from a university.

The curriculum at Hampshire College is divisionally organized. There are no "departments." There are no survey courses. The number of courses taught is small by any comparative standard. Most of these courses cut across "departmental" boundaries. The examinations by which in the end the student demonstrates his competence are divisional examinations. Hampshire College thus liberates itself from the pressures of the information explosion by providing a balanced and a metaphoric curriculum which meets the demands of liberalization without the waste of proliferation. From the beginning and as the student advances there is constantly increased emphasis upon the independent project without slighting the ingredients common to all students liberally educated. Hampshire College differs markedly from the traditional college.

The teaching at Hampshire College has the freshman seminar as its foundation. The emphasis is not on facts and figures, but on disciplines and methods. The freshman seminar is a personal and an intellectual experience which gives the student a measure for his later courses and makes him demand more from them. Many of the later courses will also be seminars. Those that are not will frequently have lectures but these will always be followed immediately, as far as possible, by student-discussion groups.

Independent studies form a large and a culminating part of the student's experience in progressive self-education. For this and for all his other work, the student has the advantage of a library specifically equipped, staffed and organized to serve his needs. The latest developments in communication systems are also available to him. The student first realizes that he does not know, then in the company of educated men and women and in association with his fellows similarly engaged, he learns the value and the joy of gaining his own wisdom.

The atmosphere at Hampshire College, stimulated by everything from architecture to recreation, is appropriate for lively, inquisitive and intelligent persons who, for this short period of their lives, desire most of all to learn together. Gone are the traditional sideshows of the college world, such as the secret society, the over-emphasis upon the big game and the excessively prolonged social weekend. As much as possible the gap between life on campus and life off campus has been closed.

The student is accepted when he is ready to learn: he may leave with his diploma whenever his examiners judge that he has in fact fulfilled the requirements for graduation. In an important sense he will never really leave Hampshire College. For the rest of his life he may look upon himself not so much as an alumnus but as a student whom the College would welcome back for shorter or longer stays whenever both he and the College feel that this might be helpful in the continuation of his learning.

Above all, Hampshire College is a laboratory for educational experimentation at the college level. This means both experimentation in what to teach and in how to teach, but especially in the methods by which a student best learns to teach himself. Under such a system selected students may gain additional advantages for themselves by serving as assistants to faculty members (and perhaps thus convince themselves that they do or that they do not want to pursue a teaching career).

Talented visitors, both academic and non-academic, especially in the performing arts, help to bring the world to the College by being in residence for shorter or longer periods. The educational potentials of radio, television, the cinema, etc., are constantly exploited to the same end. But the College also goes out to the world in some measure. The value to the individual undergraduate of a part or the whole of a year away from the College, followed by his return to his studies on the campus, may well prove to be enormous. The time involved might be spent in business, in some form of social service, in travel, or in further study elsewhere. The main requirements for this kind of venture are student initiative and faculty approval.

The students, faculty, administration and trustees of Hampshire College are mutually committed, both informally and through standing committees and indeed by the whole organization of the College, to the willingness to change in order that the College will never be enslaved to its past, but will always be in the process of shaping a better future out of the best thinking and experience of the present. (p. 6-9)

A Divisional Organization
The departmental system is nurtured by the graduate school without regard to whether or not it is appropriate at the college level. The major respect in which an undergraduate college differs from a graduate school is that it seeks to liberate rather than train in a specialty. In a day of specialists it cannot neglect the specialty, but it must fit specialization into a broad background. Its faculty must differ from the faculties of graduate schools by being composed of individuals who are at least as skillful as educators as they are as specialists, who are as much concerned with their disciplines as they are with the specialized areas of knowledge...The major problem in planning a divisional organization is the choice of divisions...The New College Plan proposed three divisions: humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this three-fold set-up, however, there is no appropriate place for such semantical and syntactical studies as language, logic, mathematics and epistemology. We therefore suggest four divisions, as follows:

1. The Humanities. This division would concern itself with man as revealed in his art, his literature, his music, his history, his religion, and his philosophy. What are his values, his aspirations, his inspirations?

2. The Natural Sciences. This group would involve primarily a study of the inorganic and organic environment of man and a study of man himself as an organism. It would deal with such concepts as natural law and scientific method.

3. The Social Sciences. This group would bring together the studies of man and society: historical, economic, sociological, psychological and philosophical. It would examine the manners in which societies operate, the concept of social law, and methodology in the social sciences.

4. The Languages (including mathematics and logic). The central focus here would be communication. This would involve a study of language in its three uses: the analytic development of calculi and their syntaxes, the synthetical development of empirical statements and their semantical functions, and the creative employment of language in literature. The history of language would also necessarily be involved. The foreign language program would be the responsibility of this division.

Philosopically, these four divisions seem sounder than the earlier three. (p. 10-12)

A Proposal for the Teaching of Elementary Foreign Language Without a Language Requirement
The committee has been impressed by the amount of time that is usually wasted in elementary foreign language study in our colleges under compulsion and the astounding failure of such requirements to produce significant results. We propose for Hampshire the abolition of the requirements on the one hand and, on the other, every possible emphasis upon the value of languages for a liberally educated student and upon their value for most of the courses taught at Hampshire College...If instruction in elementary language becomes necessary on the Hampshire campus, it should be held to a minimum in amount and should be in the hands of instructors engaged solely for this purpose, using the most modern audio-visual facilities, and under the guidance of a skilled language-coordinator. (p. 38-39)

An "Interim" Plan
It is proposed that an interim of flexible design be scheduled in a three- or four-week period between the fall and spring semesters.

A change of pace between semesters is desirable. The lack of formal course examinations allows the scheduling of a more creative period. This would be an excellent time to allow students to plan and choose, and to encourage them to give free rein to their individual interests. Such a period could play a major role in developing motivations, encouraging self-education and in providing a time for both students and faculty to pre-test ideas.

Half the faculty should be engaged in the interim. Hence, each faculty member would be free in alternate years. In advance of each interim, projects (about five in each division) organized and directed by faculty members, should be planned and suggestions for individual student projects offered...Some projects might involve considerable travel... The program suggested here is in contradiction to the "common intellectual enterprise" suggested in the New College Plan. Such a highly structured program is another form of the required course. (p. 44-45)

The Library
The library should be geared to the type of instruction indicated in this report, both in content and in the procedures for its use both by students and by members of the faculty. The architectural features of the library need the most careful study in order that the physical arrangements will facilitate its use by scholars to the maximum degree possible. The location of the library on the campus and its relationship to other College buildings is also a matter of major importance. The library, in addition to being a collection of books, should also serve as a depository for films, audio-visual tapes, slides, etc., all properly housed and cataloged. (p. 45-46)