Calendar: 1975-1976 Page 396

xxiv Annual Report of the Delegacy students who would insist most tenaciously that all they came to University for was to learn lucrative trade even these cannot remain wholly untouched by the other two influences in what is going on around them They will all their time as students be developing as people-and at speed which is sometimes startling to watch At the same time they are learning to look around them at world culture society of which the University is in part product and part productive agent and they will be able to see it all from unique vantage point from where they can get some idea of the size the shape and the sweep of the whole panorama and mark out parts of the landscape as of special interest and worth further exploration King's with its thirty departments in eight faculties ranging in addition to the vocational disciplines from Theology the Classics History Philosophy Music and Languages through Life Sciences Physical Sciences to Mathematics represents pretty full spectrum of University teaching Its Faculty structure in fact covers wider academic span than is found in any other multi-faculty school in London though it is only fifth among them in size But what is Education It may be going too far to say that it is what you have left when you have forgotten all you were taught and there would be little support for the Victorian schoolmaster's argument that it didn't much matter what you taught the young provided it was difficult and they didn't like it It is no bad thing for subject to be difficult and University should be very careful not to try to cover with cloak of academic respectability the softer options which cannot be explored in depth or with rigour But if the young don't like it they won't learn it whatever it is and that's that None the less even if we dismiss the assertions quote as misleading or unhelpful it remains true that University education must concern itself in high degree with method and the formation of mind-at least as much as with the imparting of factual knowledge and probably more If an academic discipline is respectable-and it must be demanding to be respectable-the study of it in University should offer complete education almost irrespective of the subject An honours degree course in Chemistry for example not only should be but is liberal education If the chemist then goes off and does no chemistry but becomes instead parson publisher journalist business man find nothing to regret He is going to take better mind and more mature personality with him as well as persistent habit of critical appraisal and though he may regret at first at any rate not being able