I imagine many of us were attracted to Amherst by the open curriculum-I certainly was. It seemed very clear at the time-some schools would make me take classes that I did not want to take; Amherst would not. I can remember the thrill of leafing through the course catalogue and contemplating the prospect of unrestricted choice.
After four years, the thrill is still there, but I must also admit to a feeling of disappointment. Too many students-and I include myself here -leave Amherst without a sufficient understanding of the great works and ideas of the Western tradition. We did not, for the most part, learn this material in high school. Many of us, in fact, did not have much practice writing essays in high school. It was natural, then, to expect that college would teach us that tradition and help us to write about it. Amherst, however, too often focuses on specifics while paying scant attention to writing.
This specificity makes for engaging and well-taught courses, but before we can engage these more narrowly-defined fields of study, we need a framework with which to support them. Otherwise, we are only indulging our own latest interest. It is Amherst's responsibility to provide us with this framework.
To this purpose, the faculty should agree on a core of knowledge to be taught; they certainly know what we should study better than we do. It seems foolish to suggest that an 18-year-old has a better understanding of his or her academic needs than does a scholar in the field. Perhaps it is argued that the purpose of an Amherst education is to teach students how to learn, and that this skill can be achieved within an almost infinite range of disciplines. I have no doubt that our ability as thinkers can be improved through a variety of media. Still, there are things we should know. There is a canon of writers and ideas. We can and must argue over this canon, but in order to do so, it is important that there be one-and there are some writers and ideas that cannot, in good faith, be expunged. The canon is based both on the historical importance of works, the influence they exerted and continue to exert, and also on another kind of importance-one we recognize intuitively, at sight.
Robert Frost called this "at sight" recognition "the purpose of all purposes in man." To Amherst's immense credit, there is still a Frostian spirit abroad on campus, at least as I have experienced it. In a 1935 letter to this paper Frost wrote -in words I find uniquely inspiring - "There is at least so much good in the world that it admits of form and the making of form. And not only admits of it, but calls for it. When in doubt there is always form for us to go on with. Anyone who has achieved the least form to be sure of it, is lost to the larger excruciations." The purpose of education is to awaken us to forms, and to teach our mind to move easily among them. It is the spirit of creation more than ideology that animates our studies.
Amherst should aim to achieve this Frostian spirit within the rigor of a core curriculum. The purpose of a curricular requirement is not to stuff old books and facts down our throats. The great works of human history are in us without our realizing it, and so to understand them is to understand ourselves. For what other purpose is a liberal education? When we get in trouble is when we look at these works as if they have no relevance to us, and then take a more limited approach to them. Frost derided those who "treat all poetry as if it were something else than poetry." His advice does not apply to poetry only, but to everything we study. When we stop trying to "get something out of it," we realize that we have gotten more out of it than we ever could have hoped for.