Correction appended.
Thursday night in Wilson 102, Senior Lecturer in Education Luther Spoehr spoke before approximately 20 students about "The New Curriculum as a historical phenomenon," discussing how it was initially inspired and how it has evolved over time.
According to Spoehr, many have an oversimplified view of the curricular change that took place at Brown. Spoehr said the "master narrative" of what took place in 1969 was as follows: "In the late 1960s, a band of student activists came together and put together a proposal that put Brown out of its stodgy and conservative past and moved it to a radical and unique future, one that has stayed with us for the past 40 years." Spoehr set out to correct this commonly held, but incorrect, belief of what took place.
Spoehr began by explaining how and why the American university evolved during the 1960s. During this decade "college was becoming a lot more important," as significantly more students began pursuing higher education. The the number of college students in the United States swelled after the second World War, increasing from 2.3 million to 8.5 million between 1947 and 1970, Spoehr said. The hopes for this generation, the late baby boomers, were at an all-time high — and so was the demand for a college education.
As universities were growing, concerns surfaced that students would become increasingly alienated, Spoehr said. While such concerns originated in large research universities, they did arrive at Brown, where the enrollment had increased by 1,000, to 4,600 students during the 1960s. Though Spoehr said it was somewhat odd to see similar concerns at Brown and at larger research universities such as the University of California at Berkeley, he suggested that a relative sense of scale definitely had to do with such concerns.
Brown also had a history of innovative curricula, Spoehr said. "In the previous 30 years — that is to say since 1937 — Brown had already had two new curriculums: one in 1937 and one in 1947."
In 1967, Ira Magaziner '69 P'06 P'07 P'10 and Elliot Maxwell '68, working in a Group Independent Study Project, prepared a report calling for radical curricular changes, which prefaced the New Curriculum of 1969. The concerns voiced in the report were very much relevant to the time, that "American schools were basically turning students into zombies," said Spoehr. The report was also very concerned about the pre-professional focus on campus.
When Spoehr was asked to discuss the future of Brown's curriculum, he hesitated, saying, "I'm a historian."
"Institutions don't stay the same," Spoehr said. "That's one of the points I'm hoping to get across tonight — Brown in 1969 is not the same as Brown now by any stretch of the imagination."
"I thought it was really interesting," said Sam Margo '14. "Professor Spoehr is kind of ‘the man' ... He was talking about the push toward pre-professionalism and I thought that was very interesting because that's on-going right now."
Ian Eppler '13, who took a class with Spoehr last year, also said he was very pleased to hear Spoehr speak. "I think that Professor Spoehr is one of the best lecturers and professors/teachers at Brown."
"I will take advantage of any opportunity to hear him speak," Eppler added.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that number of college students nearly quadrupled during the 1960s. The correct statistic is that the number of college students in the United States increased from 2.3 million to 8.5 million between 1947 and 1970. The Herald regrets the error.
