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Does Directed Studies Need a New Direction?
November
1999
by Simon Rodberg '00
Simon
Rodberg, a senior in Davenport College, writes a column on student
life for the Internet magazine Salon.
My
sister wrote her first Yale paper today, three years after I finished
my first Yale paper on the same book for the same class.
This commonality isn't just a family affair: Directed Studies gives
120 freshmen access to top professors in interlocking seminar-style
classes on Western literature, historical and political thought,
and philosophy. Freshmen have no other way to get such a heady and
wonderful experience in the humanities.
But if
my children come to Yale, I hope that they won't take the same D.S.
As much as the program's rigor and passion typify the best of Yale,
its provincialism serves as a reminder that the University -- promoter
of unbiased scholarship and the increase of knowledge -- does not
yet epitomize its own ideals. The issue isn't only diversity, though.
It's education.
In the
spirit of critical inquiry, then: Why did Directed Studies never
mention colonialism in its intellectual history of post-1492 Europe?
Why is Yale-sponsored study abroad only possible in London? Why
must the 70-member history department hire a one-year visiting assistant
professor to teach its course on India, a country with more people
and a longer history than all of Europe combined?
Yale's
fundamental view of intellectual life and historical role models
is one of Great Minds (coincidentally all European males) talking
to each other. Directed Studies is the way Western intellectuals
want to see the world: with themselves, and only their chosen influences,
at the center of things.
But wouldn't
it be more accurate, not to say intellectually rigorous and interesting,
to discuss the Sumerian antecedents to the Hebrew Bible that predate
it by a millennium? Isn't the study of Paradise Lost enriched by
the consideration of popular religious practices and 17th-century
exploration? Why do the Enlightenment and the slave trade mature
together? Of course, Directed Studies can't cover everything, but
I doubt that it's a coincidence that the curriculum has never found
room for questions that might put the books on the wrong side of
history.
We're
beginning to see some evolution. This year, for the first time,
Directed Studies freshmen will hear Jonathan Spence lecture on how
China sees the West. But wouldn't we learn even more from a comparison
of contemporaries Plato and Confucius, the scholarly traditions
of both the African griot and the Catholic monk? It's not impossible:
A new one-year World Literatures course runs the gamut from 7th-century
Arabic love poetry to Macbeth to Jorge Luis Borges. What if Yale
sponsored study-abroad programs in Beijing and Cairo, and finally
created a permanent chair in South Asian history? What if we transformed
the centerpieces of our curriculum to reflect the way the world
actually is, or at least to reveal the real history of our chosen
tradition?
I do
hope that my children take something called D.S., with the small
classes, top professors, and camaraderie of the paper-afflicted.
I just hope they also receive an education that's broader and even
deeper than the one I got, with their studies directed a little
closer to the larger truth. 
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