WHY MAKE KNOWLEDGE ODIOUS?

The thunderous, irrepressible applause which greeted Professor Bliss Perry at the close of his course in the history of English Literature yesterday morning, was an interesting contrast to the dilatory clap-clap which celebrates the conclusion of the generality of courses in the University.

The applause in English 41, which has become an annual event, and an annual marvel, may be interpreted as an expression of gratitude from several hundred normal undergraduates to a professor who has made a sincere and successful attempt to be human as well as instructive throughout the year.

For, sadly enough, this phenomenon is all too rare at Harvard. In too many courses do lecturers who give the effect of being half-hearted, or ill-prepared, or both, send their students away at the end of the term with a wholesome distaste for the subjects which they teach.

Two reasons for this seeming attitude on the part of professors and instructors may be found in the following extracts from the 1924 Senior class questionnaire. One man wrote:

"As I understand it, the promotion of professors and their increases in salary depend not upon their ability to teach men or to inspire them to work, but upon their ability to turn out at stated intervals a book upon some subject pertaining to their field of research: Because of this system there is a double temptation for professors to neglect their students, because it is more interesting to write books and it is also their best means of winning a larger salary. The result is that the student, as a human being, is almost entirely neglected. . . . I believe a professor should be first a teacher and second a writer."

Another said:

"I found great scholars trying to be teachers and failing; while outside, in tutoring schools, great teachers, who did not have time to be scholars, were succeeding. There were notable exceptions, but this was the rule."

Perhaps a still more valid cause is that most professors, even in the most elementary of courses, presuppose on the part of their students, an interest which does not exist. For that reason, they feel that they are fulfilling their duties if they retail the facts, in no matter how cold and dreary a manner. For graduate students, already deeply engrossed in their work, this assumption may apply, but as concerns undergraduates it is a serious fallacy.

It is possible to make almost any course in the College interesting. History, even records the day when students in Philos C prolonged their hour for long minutes to applaud the lectures of Professor Wallace Clement Sabine. And failure to be interesting implies failure on the part of the instructor, however much he may choose to disregard the fact.

Harvard students have long since relinquished the hope that lecturers will fill them with enthusiasm for the subjects they teach. But they can hardly be blamed for bestowing their sincerest applause on the exceptional professor who is willing to make the effort to be interesting.