Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Kinley Speech Cirrculum and Consequences (1924) [PAGE 8]

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24

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION

OF

fields, particularly in the natural sciences, A movement s u d as this towards specialization is always overdone. Some of the splitting up, if I may call it SO, has be*n dojne deliberately as a result of well considered judgment that it is either educationally or scientifically needful or desirable. Still again, new subjects have conn? into the purview of our educational bodies and have naturally become fields of separate study. From these have arisen departments and subdivisions of departments that, in many cases, are entirely justifiable. Very likely other influences have contributed to the situation, but it is not necessary to treat the subject exhaustively, for our main interest lies in the situation itself.

ADDITIONAL CAUSE OF DIFFERENTIATION OF CURBIOULUM

A consideration of some of the so-called specialized fields of study leads one to wonder where educational wisdom and administrative restraint were when these subjects were permitted to enter the curriculum. There would appear to be some ground for believing that the desire to prevent a falling off in registration was an influential reason for some new courses. For example, we have had colleges of agriculture which for a generation or more have been studying real agriculture, although in recent years the number of students taking such work has been falling off. But that must not be permitted, so we will put into our colleges of agriculture some subjects with the word agriculture in their names so that enrollment in them will add to our Dumber Accordingly we have agricultural economics, rural sociology (whatever that may be), agricultural engineering, and possibly in time we may have agricultural athletics, agricultural psychology, and so on. Now the appropriateness of studying problem.- that have specific application to agriculture or to industry or to trad is obvious enough. Is it not possible, however, thai a mistake has been made in separating these small portions from their general fields? This educational movement appears to me to bo a part of that general class movement which has manifested il

self i n Various ways in o u r c o u n t r y and el where in tho past

generation. The universities, by permitting those sp ial departmental subdivisions have fostered (he movement towards d a

Consciousness. Of course I use the r i c u l t u r a l subject merely

as an illustration. I might have used anj on< of so\ ral othci Again, certain fields have been pushed into the t o n - >und o(

public attention, the Niilmliinf iality of which is an open qu< lion