THE GUIDE AGAIN

The CRIMSON'S Confidential Guide of College Courses published at the beginning of the current college year was perhaps one of the principal factors in undergraduate life which has caused many twenty, thirty, or forty-year alumni to remark. "The undergraduate of today is an entirely different animal from what he was in our day". To the student the Yard walls and the various college buildings feel not unlike the iron fences and the cages that make up a zoo when curious alumni return to look over these interesting modern specimens.

And in certain respects, though not so profoundly as many would have us believe, the students of today are quite different from the undergraduate generations of the nineties. It is true that students are now vitally concerned with all they do and all that is done to them. No longer are they accepting rules, regulations, customs, or traditions, on faith. Reflecting the analytical tendencies of the professional, scientific, and literary man, the undergraduates are no longer content with anything until it is proved correct by analysis. There is nothing yet to show that this tendency is beneficial to the community. It cannot be said certainly that the many educational innovations of the past few years would not have taken place just the same if the students had kept perfectly silent. Yet the fact must be admitted that the innovations have taken place and that students have given vent to a great many opinions. With those who believe that the undergraduates have merely echoed opinions long held by their elders, we cannot argue. We can suggest, however, that at least the students have produced an echo where before they emitted not a sound. We can also point to the fact that educational tendencies have never been so progressive as in the last few years, or in other words, since the students have begun to think independently and make demands of their own.

The present success, worldly, scholarly, or spiritual, as the case may be, of those who were graduated in the nineties is used as a refutation to the claim that modern students are no better off than their fathers. We would remind those who hold that argument that the problems facing a young graduate upon entering a profession or business have become increasingly complicated and difficult and that consequently the preparation must become increasingly enlightening. There is also the probability, which we cannot pass over without mention, that the old outlook which seldom extended beyond the family or small community has now enlarged to the nation and world it seems the natural consequence of independent thinking in the college community and beyond the single university unit as evidenced by the National Student Federation, that more and more young graduates will enter national and international enterprises.

The CRIMSON, therefore, feels completely justified in continuing its policy of fostering the expression of undergraduate opinion on all questions At present it is concerned with its second Confidential Guide of College Courses which it will publish at the start of the 1926-1927 college year. Last year each criticism was "the honest reaction of an individual of normal individual of normal intelligence to a particular subject and its manner of presentation in Harvard classrooms". Each was written by an editor of the CRIMSON. Next year the CRIMSON will endeavor to make the guide more representative of general undergraduate opinion by calling for contributions from the college at large.