Excerpt from Introduction to Contemporary Civilization: A Syllabus
The Faculty of Columbia College determined at its meeting in January, 1919, to discontinue the required courses in History and Philosophy and, beginning in September, 1919, to substitute a course on Contemporary Civilization which should meet five times a week and be required of all Freshmen.
The purpose of the entire course is to raise for consideration the insistent problems of the present. To give the student, early in his college course, objective material on which to base his own farther studies and his own judgments will, it is believed, aid him greatly in enabling him to understand the civilization of his own day, and to participate effectively in it.
The early part of the course is a preparation for the consideration of the problems of the present. Nature in its physical features and resources and man with his equipment of more or less modifiable traits are presented as materials to be used in rebuilding the present into a more desirable future. The intellectual tools, or concepts, which have played an important part in attempted solutions are also treated in their context: the application of exact science to the control of nature, the idea of mass production for world distribution, and the belief in the participation of the governed in their own control.
The more immediate setting of the problems is next developed through the study (1) of the historic background of contemporary civilization, and (2) of the recent historical development of the great national states.
Then, in turn, and in considerable detail, there are presented the chief problems arising in attempts to find satisfactory solutions of the difficulties incident to the major relationships which men sustain. The problems of imperialism and the "backward peoples," of nationalism and internationalism, of our contemporary industrial life, of conservation, of political control, and of education are treated, with an attempt in every case to state the alternatives at issue, and to relate them to the materials through the use of which change must come, to the dominant concepts of our day, and to their own historical setting.
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