To the Editor:
In "Practically perfect" (Editorial, Sept. 29), The Herald quotes a 1937 statement by former Brown President Henry Wriston that includes the phrase "liberal arts education." While describing a Brown education as one based in the liberal arts was appropriate in the 1930s, the expression is no longer an appropriate way to describe undergraduate education at Brown, nor has it been for some time.
With coursework in the sciences at Brown firmly established by the 1870s, beginning in the first term of the junior class, like chemistry and physics, and in the second term physiology, the label "a liberal arts education" was amended to a liberal arts and sciences education. Today, undergraduates pursuing either an A.B. or Sc.B. at Brown are actually pursuing a liberal arts and sciences education.
Indeed, one of the primary justifications for Brown's unique Program in Liberal Medical Education, which allows provisionary admission to Brown's M.D. degree to entering first-years, is to encourage future M.D.s to pursue study across the curriculum of arts and sciences and not just concentrate in the sciences as preparation for medical school.
The Practicality Club provides a wonderful opportunity for Brown undergraduates who have grown up in families that did not prepare them for the real world outside the Van Wickle Gates. Knowing how to unclog a W.C., for example, could mean the difference between returning the unit to normal working order and a very costly bill to repair the floor and ceiling of the room below.
To that end, Brown students who don't know how to take an old window out and install a new one might want to volunteer on Saturdays with Habitat for Humanity. College Hill and the greater Providence area have copious opportunities for students to get involved and learn beyond the offerings of the University's liberal arts and sciences-based curriculum.
James Owen Ross '86Sept. 29
