Some Programs for Harvard College

The usual form of a CRIMSON board's concluding editorial is a recapitulation of its policies over the year. We will forego this redundancy, for you have already read (or chosen to ignore) our opinions about the aimlessness of American foreign policy, the need for patient resolve in settling the civil rights issue, and the virtual impossibility of comprehending or justifying the Student Council.

The problems we wish to consider are the two areas of real concern to students in the college, which is crowded now and will not get any smaller. An $82.5 million fund drive and definite commitments to expansion emphasize that size and scope will remain a basis of Harvard's greatness, and planning must account for this.

Expansion is logically incumbent on a college that serves the nation, and even if Harvard's can be only a token efforts, it must still be made. But numbers are not desirable only for themselves, but also for the diversity they bring. If expansion is to serve the College as well as the nation, it should be conceived not in terms of a student body 15 to 20 per cent larger, but as a student body 15 to 20 per cent more varied, containing that many more individuals.

The Two Methods

There are two particular ways in which to achieve this end, and neither of them is notable for its economy. But if Harvard is still to offer a unique educational experience, the Administration will have to resist the temptations of supermarket education, and attend to the House system and independent study.

The House system is the greatest existing weapon with which the College can fight the menace of uncontrolled growth, for the Houses can be made into vital intellectual and social centers, even within the framework of a larger College. They serve such a purpose for some students now, but not for nearly enough. Too many view them as places to sleep, and to eat a not particularly good meal.

Crowding is one reason for this. It exists on two levels: the extreme case of the man living in Wigglesworth who is allegedly a member of Winthrop House, and the more common case of the room built for two that holds three or four. New Houses may do something about the men who live outside the House walls, but whether they will cure, or much relieve, the overcrowded Houses themselves, is another matter. Indeed, it seems likely that forced commuters will remain, for the College will believe that it can educate more than it can house. Crowding will probably stay, too, under the belief that the College can house, one way or another, more students than it could house ideally.

Physical Shortcomings

Architectural details have much to do with the value of a House, even aside from purely aesthetic considerations. Physical shortcomings often reduce two of the most valuable House facilities to near uselessness. The library and the dining hall are severely handicapped by the present degree of overcrowding. The former is often more crowded than Lamont, though it may smell better; while the unholy din and general cafeteria atmosphere may prohibit worthwhile conversation in the dining hall. Some structural revisions may be possible, but in any case some dining hall crowding might be eliminated by longer hours, which could provide a more gradual flow of students through the lunch-line and less crowding at any given moment.

Physical details cannot, of course, suffice to make the Houses vital intellectual institutions in an expanded College. This essential position can best be achieved by lectures, the presence of distinguished guests for formal and informal discussion, sections in Houses, and, above all, greater emphasis on tutorial instruction within the Houses. Tutorial, with its provision for tutors living in the Houses, provides the surest means to making the Houses alive to the intellectual side of Harvard.

Better House Committees

On the student's level, if the House committees can become concerned about these problems, they can rise above their present status as custodians of the pool room, laundry machines, and television set. Some efforts, like the Lowell House Forum, where seniors explain and argue the substance of their theses to a group of interested students and tutors, are to be commended particularly. House dramatics, various music groups, and even newspapers are increasingly making Houses more than dormitories. Intramural athletics, to be spurred by the H.A.A.'s plans for more and better playing fields, also aid this development.

The Houses now have only a vague role mapped for them, and the Administration's intermittent attention is partly at fault. A top-level Committee on Houses, concerned with more than parietal rules, seems one sensible way to meet the problem, and its recommendations should rceive wide public discussion, whatever their financial implications.

While much can be done to vitalize the intellectual climate of Harvard by strengthening the Houses, formal instruction may still suffer if numbers, rather than students, become the chief goal. The cramming of this last month, or any January or May, is not the only way to learn; obviously it is inferior to continued studying over a long period. The Administration seems to feel that students now work mainly for grades, while only an occasional rare type may work on his own for some other incentive. It is difficult to debate this sort of question, for there are few statistics on which to base our confidence that a considerable number of students work for goals other than grades. But the really distressing matter is that the Administration seems content to adjust its methods to the grade-directed student, rather than to help show him the importance of a book for its own sake.

However widespread this primary obeisance to grades may be, and it is common, Harvard's educational system must bear much of the blame. The readiness of administrators to check a student's academic record before forming any opinion of him is one cause, but not nearly so significant as the Faculty's reliance on the theory that a man's learning of four months can be determined by seeing what he can scrawl in a bluebook in three hours, and that he will learn because he wants to scrawl the right things in the bluebook.

One approach to the problem of students not working hard enough is the line that argues for more frequent grading, qualifying examinations for honors, grades to force students to work for tutorial, and stiffer standards all the way along. Co-existing with this view is the one that propounds relaxation, not of standards but of rules, to permit more independent work. It argues that the Faculty and the subjects it can teach are interesting enough so that, given a chance, the student will investigate them for their own sake. Course reduction and tutorial for credit are means to lighten the burden of courses and to let a man work on something for no other reason than because he is interested in it.

Articulate Education

These programs are uniquely successful, for they can force a student to defend his ideas before a critical inquisitor, who makes him show what he knows and how he learned it. This educational approach, combined with a real interest in the subject, promotes the most deeply felt sort of learning. Of course, it is expensive; much less satisfying to Lehman Hall than 350 students listening to Albert J. Guerard or Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Obviously not every student can be given this opportunity, and certainly not everyone would want the freedom, but some greater expense should be shouldered by the departments, which can make this system work if they want to. Some have been doing an excellent job of furthering independent study, through special courses, better tutorial, receptiveness to course reduction. Some have been too conservative.

One scheme that certainly ought to be given a try is the courseless senior year. Yale has had remarkable success with its Scholar of the House program, and it cannot seriously be argued that there are not a dozen seniors who would profit from this sort of opportunity to read and listen to what they liked, meeting with a tutor regularly to discuss their work.

These two means to avoid inundation by the potentially overwhelming size of the College--generally, the House system, and on a more refined level, independent study--can preserve Harvard for the individual student. They are the questions of policy most urgently requiring attention.