Area Study and General Education

T HE average American highschool and college graduate knows little about how people live in other parts of the globe. He lacks not only information on foreign areas or regions but also knowledge of methods and principles with which to evaluate the facts about a given area. As far as principles for evaluation exist, they remain the exclusive property of the specialist; the educator in general has not acquired them. Each specialist has been interested in the special phase of his work; there has been little co-ordination between the geographer, the anthropologist, the sociologist, the economist, and the political scientist. The need for an understanding of foreign areas is becoming more and more evident in America. The movement of the western frontier has come