College: The new MIT course

DESCRIBING THE NEW introductory course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is like trying to describe an evolving nation. It exists and therefore can be characterized at its present state. Yet one’s view of the course is a mixture of past tradition, past and present hopes and partial realization of these hopes. Furthermore, any introductory course perforce selects its topics, viewpoints and themes from a set far too rich to be encompassed in any one course. The course described therefore represents a compromise of many choices and many points of view. It also represents the present state of experimentation, from which any particular lecturer will depart and from which the future structure will certainly depart.

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