Is the Lifeboat Leaking

Authors

John Hicks, Southern Methodist University

Abstract

What liberalizing educational course or curriculum is good for a student? Will the student see the opportunity inherent in a course if it assumes a degree of comprehension he hasn't yet been educated to? Will it do him good if he can't or won't grasp it now?

Can colleges start all over at the existent level, give elementary training, and yet arrive at language mastery and disciplined thinking and esthetic sensitivity? Can we ask a chronologically mature matriculant to defer graduation until still later? Or are the lost quite lost?

If, then, a student is free to elect, with few institutional requirements or restraints, won't he choose what is patently entertaining and not very demanding? Or if a student is free to elect, yet inclines to something valuable won't he choose what has apparent value to him now, and therefore something of present utility, not of long-range humane enrichment? How should he envisage such?

Recommended Citation

Hicks, John (1975) "Is the Lifeboat Leaking," Perspectives (1969-1979): Vol. 7: No. 2, Article 7.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/perspectives/vol7/iss2/7