“We all know the extent to which our traditional education is, in effect, the history of the Western heritage. That statement remains true, despite the introduction in recent years of non-Western material into our curricula. In far too many cases, that material has not been added equally; it has been grafted on as an interesting, comparative sidelight to the main thrust. It is all too true that our outlook continues to be shaped by the European tradition of the nation state, but our ideal, our mission must be far more ecumenical. The scope of the College must be the world if it is to live up to its charge.”
President Roger Howell Jr., tenth president of Bowdoin College, Inauguration Address, October 3, 1969.
Our fifth Preliminary of the Bowdoin Project, “Bowdoin’s History from 1952 to 1978,” is the third of four installments which will trace the history of the college from its founding to the present day. This installment explores President James Stacy Coles’s initiative to divert Bowdoin’s curricular focus from the “ancient and recent past” to “the activity of the present”; and it recounts President Roger Howell Jr.’s effort to “liberate” Bowdoin students from general education requirements. Whereas students in the 1968-1969 academic year were required to complete a two-part English composition sequence, oral communication, two years of physical education, two years of foreign language, foreign language conversation and composition, two semesters of laboratory science, two semesters of literature in the original language, a major, a minor, and a senior seminar, Bowdoin students in the 1970-1971 academic year could graduate by completing thirty-two courses of their own choosing, provided that they fulfilled the requirements of a major.
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Since September 2011, NAS has been conducting an in-depth, ethnographic study of Bowdoin College in Maine. We asked, “what does Bowdoin teach?” and examined Bowdoin’s formal curriculum, its residential and student life policies, and its co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. We have dedicated a page on our website to the Bowdoin Project. The full report will be published there in April. In the meantime, we will continue posting a series of Preliminaries which will provide context for the report.
