HARVARD HISTORY IN ENGLISH A

Why is Harvard University no longer supported by the State? How has it come about that the graduates exercise so great an influence on the government of the University? What is the Bussey Institution? Most questionnaires succeed in making the answerer feel ignorant, but ignorance of some things is no loss. When we are confronted, however, with questions that demonstrate how little we know of our own college, the matter strikes us in a different light. An American citizen is expected to have some acquaintance with the history and organization of his country; why not expect a reasonable knowledge of the University's past from a Harvard undergraduate?

It should not be difficult to find some scheme for presenting this information to the student in such a way that he cannot miss it. A study of Harvard History might well be incorporated in English A, both by lectures and prescribed reading. Such a plan would offer a plan of reaching the greatest number of men at an opportune time. Incidentally such an addition to the course would be most acceptable, if Freshmen who now consider English A more or less a necessary evil could feel that there was something especially interesting and worth while about it.

Harvard has an unusual history--with more than one good story to animate its telling. From the little "College at Newtowne" dominated by state and church has grown a great university with elaborate equipment and enormous enrollment; from the Puritanical discipline and strict classical and theological training has emerged the modern method of education with its elective system and intricate mechanisms. Surely every Harvard man should not only feel it a duty to know something about this history, but enjoy the learning of it.