Specialization, part one

The following tape recorded program is a presentation of the National Association of educational

broadcasters. Hazards to education in the

United States. The University of Chicago radio office presents the second in a

series of four talks by Robert M. Hudgens associate director of the Ford

Foundation. Mr. Hudgens spoke under the auspices of the Walgreen lectureship at the University of

Chicago. Today's program is entitled specialization Mister

Hudgins.

Last night. We saw that in education and

dedicated to industrial power. It is not likely to achieve the

results expected of us. We saw too

that if an industrial power is the object. Of.

Scientific education at a high level it is more likely

to achieve it than technical training at a low level.

But there are of course some problems about science.

Science spreads splits things up and the

smaller and smaller pieces of specialisation as the

life of science. The more specialized

scientific institution is. The better it is likely to be.

A scientific the quiet room and a university is a large

collection of specialists living in a tent.

25 to 50 years old. The name of which has little

or no connection with what goes on inside.

Think of the name. Physiology or chemistry or anatomy.

As we used to understand it a generation ago and

compare the connotations of it then with the activities of

physiologists chemists anatomists carry on the

day the names of these departments are

hereditary titles. That are no more significant than

such appellations now carry with them in the political world.

Though they have little significance in describing the work

that is done under their auspices. I have considerable importance

in the lives of those who progressed through these departments and

receive their degree. I

must say that a university department in general. Seems to

justify its existence as a kind of guild or trade

union. The departments name. And

any field need have little connection with the work it does.

Some departments of literature for example seem to be departments of

history and West sticks or philosophy.

But the candidates for the higher degrees in these departments have to

get jobs in other departments in the same a field must receive

insignia. Generally recognizable in the academic world.

We know that there are departments of anguish and that they will

employ the Ph.D.s in English. They want to employ

nobody else. If a candidate for the Ph.D. in English

gets interested let's say and Jonathan Edwards studies

history philosophy and theology and knows nothing whatever

about English literature and he must still get his Ph.D. in English

and still get a job in an English department. There are no

departments of Jonathan Edwards.

And there are none. In which history

philosophy and theology form a respectable

combination. Such

names as physiology chemistry and anatomy to which may be

added the names of many other scientific departments and pry an

understanding of some considerable field of knowledge.

The activities of departments bearing these names carry no such

implication. It is not necessary for a professor in these

fields to say nothing of a graduate student. To wonder stand the

subject and it may be a positive disadvantage tone to try to

do so. A scientist succeeds through splitting

off on a manageable fragment of the natural world and submitting it to

thorough examination. The fragments get smaller and

smaller specialisation becomes narrower and

narrower. The better a scientific department is in terms of the

scientific eminence of its members. The more productive it is

in terms of the volume of research turned out a larger and

more expensive it is the more likely it is of a composed

of extremely special AIs persons training probably sometimes still

more specialized. As I have

said this is fine for the advancement of knowledge.

If by that phrase we mean the acquisition of more and

more detailed information about the world.

But the success of this process and natural science has not been

without its disadvantages to education. I

take it. That the aim of education is not to gain

more and more detailed knowledge of the physical world but to

understand our world and ourselves in it. If

we split the world up in order to gain detailed knowledge of it

at some point we have to put it together again in order to wonder

stand. This is not likely to be done by

modern experimental scientists or by any aggregation of them.

One reason it can't be done by any aggregation of them is that

they can't understand one another. This is a

deprivation to them as scientists or at least it would seem so.

Or it would appear that a man ought to be a better scientist if he could understand

science and other scientists. But the extreme

specialization. Is a natural. And inevitable and to some

extent desirable and experimental science. Has aroused the

enthusiastic imitation of scholars in other fields where

it is unnatural and avoidable and wholly undesirable.

Every important scientific discovery produces a new

memorable new special rooms. In the lines of investigation open

up and then must be trained to follow them. So that we can

see you know when the scientific progress we can start seeing no limit

to the multiplication of scientific specialties and the man has

quite a list specifically for the new specialties that appear.

But in terms of the size of the total population the number of

specialists that science will require is very small indeed.

Industrialization mechanization well done special

on science and technology. Tender attempts the proportion

of specialists that the society has on her will come crying for.

Land on the assembly line as they grow apart which mechanisation

ten years. Rises all the absolute number

of specialists needed to keep science technology and industry

moving well and crazy. Relative demand for specialists

must decline.

I'm not denying. It. But there may be many new ways of earning a

living. Many new occupations growing out of new

discoveries inventions and a man's. I am

asserting that the total time of training required for

specialized or differentiated occupations or ways of

earning a living must steadily shrink as mechanization

advances. As mechanization mechanization advances.

All occupations may be swept out of existence.

I have no doubt but perhaps you may have some. But I have

none.

After 30 years of disillusionment that somewhere in the

country today there is a school or junior college or

college that has a course for pin boys and bowling alleys.

And I have no doubt that it's a bit of ministration and back only

now looking with alarm at the new machine that must

inevitably drive the Penn boys out of the alleys.

Never to return.

I still anxiously await the full effect

of what I believe is called the home permanent.

I still anxiously await its full effect upon the a number of GL

courses. And what is called cosmetology offered by the

school's junior colleges and Colleges of the state of

California.

I saw it the other day and Berkeley. Something that even I never

expected to see in my lifetime.

I saw a doctor of philosophy and driver

education.

No he'll call in the schools of California and I graduate

without taking a course in how to drive an automobile.

These courses after have teachers teachers have to

take courses and methods of teaching how to drive an automobile.

Teachers these teachers have to be faster

cars and colleges or universities. Professors and

colleges and universities have to be doctors of philosophy.

Therefore in California there have to be doctors of

philosophy and driver education.

The one I saw was a very good driver.

Anyone who was resident on the roads of California.

And understand why the people of that state should want to make

sure that the rising generation learns how to drive better than its

predecessors.

Just as anyone who has seen a forest fire and understand why

courses and Fire Prevention are required in the state colleges of

California. It doesn't automatically follow

that the educational system of that community should try to meet whatever

needs the community thanks are pressing. Is there no other way to

see to it that young people learn to drive or to refrain from

throwing lighted cigarettes into the what.

If the community thanks looked it needs beauticians. All right the young ladies of

the community think that they need to become beauticians. Is the

educational system the only or the best place in which

these needs and be gratified. These questions can be

answered only if we can get some more rational view than we have at

present. The purpose of education in our education

fits in with other social institutions.

At the lower levels of education in America the tendency toward

over specialization. Seems to result from the

frustration of teachers themselves ill prepared.

And fronting enormous crowds of ill prepared and uninterested

pupils in a society that has come to regard earning a living

as the first if not the whole duty of man.

And that is learn from John Dewey that the young are going to be interested and

educated that through the study of occupations.

John do we use authority cannot be cited on behalf of

specialized education. Still less than vocational training

which he regarded as narrow and then never.

Looking at an industrial society. He concluded that the young

should understand and that they should do so through considering the

various economic activities of life in them our own political

social and scientific context. He also thought

that this would be very interesting to them. His

psychology appears to be faulty and his program impractical

at least it has never been tried. To throw

a natural misunderstanding. It is going to assume that when Mr. Dewey

said that education could best be acquired through the study of

occupations he meant that the best education was that which

prepared the pupil for an occupation. This

notion is the bomb and Eliot for which Christ rated teachers and parents were

waiting. On the same to provide the necessary income of soco endorsement

of what they wanted to do anyway. They wanted to train young

people for occupations because they did not know what else to do with them.

Thank Allah hard it is to teach the young idea how to shoot.

To get a large group of reluctant and recalcitrant children to learn to

read and write and figure and interest themselves in the tradition in which

they live. Oh children as a matter of fact do not care

very much about the life around them and particularly about its economic

aspects. Their parents are obsessed with the notion that they must

eventually make their way in the world and that their education ought to have

something to do with this process. It is

impossible for us a product of an industrial age

the magic of the grave security provided by the family of the

late hero and the customs of Europe in earlier times

and in the Middle and Far East. Today. The business of

casting out the young to shift for themselves is a 19th century

novel. The activities of labor unions and

social reformers may be regarded as an attempt to recover

industrial insecurity for the proletariat.

And an industrial age. The community must hope that the young

one Castillo's will be able to make themselves independent.

If they do not. The community has no traditional way of taking

care of them.

Hence earning a living. The Commons the first duty of man.

This notion is reinforced in America by the common opinion that a

man who does not succeed must fail by his own fault.

During the Great Depression when people were thrown out of work all over

the world by events over which they had not the slightest control.

One could still see in the attitude toward the relief of the

unemployed persistent powerful was the view

that a man was not able to support himself and his family was in some way

to blame. Since parents do not want their children

to grow up to be social pariahs. They must feel that everything

is being done during childhood and to make these children

and economically independent.

Today of course the United States is the easiest country in the

world in which to make a living. On the economic machine

works. There is high unemployment when it falters the state

keeps the population alive. That because of the phenomenon

summed up in Professor Rodman is for a cultural lag. We

still think that the first duty of the educational system is to help

young people earn a living. Actually the only way in

which education can help a young person make a living or a better

living than he would make without it is to help him make the formal

and educational requirements for entrance into certain occupations.

The number of occupations that have such requirements is steadily

increasing and the number of years that must be spent in school to meet

them is steadily being right.

As a result of that right bulk of the students in American universities

are there in order to meet the needs requirements.

The public at public acquiesces in these requirements first

because it is a custom to walk with us and the demands of pressure groups.

And second because it has a vague feeling that the members of

certain occupations at least should be certified or sanctified

before they are let loose upon the public.

The public is on rolling. Often for good reasons to

trust these occupations to certify their own members.

The universities acquiesce in these arrangements because the universities wish to

increase their enrolments students bring in n come. And

anyway there is a general feeling that excellence and

educational institutions as in most other things

increases in proportion to.

Craig's occupation and businesses and professions.

These arrangements because of their monopolistic ambitions. To

restrict competition and also to enhance their price Steve.

Since of course I believe that everybody can and should learn. I

should recommend a method by which people are so jealous and of forming the

habit of learning. It is of course possible

to learn something from anything that is even possible to learn something from

anybody. If the teacher is a genius you can draw the

most significant lessons from the most trivial with Cajuns

since the number of geniuses in the educational system must always

remain rather limited. It seems unwise to frame a

program of study on which learning can take place

only if they eliminate that subject matter. In the

hands of ordinary teachers trivialities must always

remain trivial.

The educational program for school janitors at Teachers College

Columbia.

Or for a major address at the University of Oklahoma.

Or for our beauticians at Pasadena City College or for

circus performers at Florida State University.

All for teachers of driving at the University of California

might be proly education.

If Socrates were the teacher.

Socrates would doubtless begin with incidents in the life of a

janitor majorette mutation or show fire.

And would undoubtedly end with the deepest philosophical conclusions about the

organisation of society and the destiny of man.

But of course he would not be accepted as a teacher in any of these programs

because he would never have bothered to acquire what are called the professional

qualifications that are necessary.

And the teachers will have these qualifications in the wire except one must

find the task of developing intellectual content out of such on

promising materials far beyond their power.

How.

Many occupations do you know where the intellectual subjects

subjects in other words it can be thought about by ordinary people.

Teaching is an obvious example. But teaching like many other

occupations has no intellectual content in its own right.

Education is a secondary dependent subject. It depends on

what you want and what you can do. What you want. The Times on your

philosophy what you can do depends on your circumstances.

Wherever you touch education it fades into something else. The

teacher has to have knowledge but not what purports to be knowledge of

methods of teaching. Again from Texas prepared by professors of

education and universities. The teacher has to have knowledge of the

subject that he is attempting to teach. In addition it would be helpful

if you knew how to read write speak and figure.

It would be helpful in short if you knew the liberal arts which are the

arts of communication.

The requirement for teaching in the elementary and secondary schools is a

certain number of courses and education. The

requirement for college and university teaching is the Ph.D. degree.

The courses in education and so far as they are specifically

courses on how to teach are in the organization of the educational

system are notably lacking in content. And could in no

event have much meaning for a person who had never taught.

A Ph.D. to grade may have some relation or preparation for

specialized research but has none of the college teaching or do

any of the activities and what college teachers customarily

engage. What a teacher needs is

a liberal education and special preparation and when the subject or

subject and he may be called upon to teach. This

preparation should not be such as to render him an

educated man one incapable of contributing to the

education of others. I defy anybody to

show that the ph data grade and any of its usual

manifestations has had any but a baleful effect on the

colleges of liberal arts to which most of those who hold it grow.

The most striking change in liberal arts colleges over the last 50 years

is the medical education of courses. Multiplication of departments and

the reduction in the scope of the intellectual scope of the individual

teacher and a liberal arts college 50 years ago.

The professor of history could take the work of the professor of literature or

if the professor of literature or got sick. Now if the professor

of American history gets second the professor of English history cannot

take his work.

And enter university. If the professor of American history from

1862 1864 gets sick I am.

You know what will happen if the professor of American history from

1865 the way Team 70 is asked to take his work.

I am not recommending. That professors be regarded as

interchangeable parts.

I am not suggesting that the specialized training is useless or

unnecessary in specialized fields. You certainly want to

man allies special preparation and his subject. You would also

like to feel that he was a person who had had and could

communicate the kind of education which a college of liberal arts

is supposed to stand. If he has had such an education why special

preparation and his failed. And if before he is let loose upon the

public he has had practice and teaching under supervision.

He would have a better chance of knowing what the liberal arts teacher ought to do

when they are an educated holder of the Ph.D..

What the prospective research worker needs is a liberal education.

Special preparation and the subject in which he plans to carry on

research. And practice and research under supervision.

The reason he needs a liberal education is that he is a man and a

citizen. And the major premise of these lectures is that every

man and every citizen need a liberal education.

The prospective research worker also needs a liberal education in order to wonder

stand his subject.