DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT AND MATH GIVE REPORT

On Saturday the Crimson published the plans of the Departments of English and of Philosophy in regard to the Reading Period. Below appear the reports of the Departments of Government and Mathematics on the same subject. Professor W. Y. Elliott, Chairman of the Government department wrote the following article.

The Department of Government proposes to test the possibilities of the reading period by carrying it out as fully as possible in the spirit of the original recommendation to the Faculty by the Division of History, Government, and Economics. This Division has been something of a pioneer in combining tutorial and course instruction and its Departments may fittingly experiment rather more thoroughly than others with the complete cessation of course instruction except, as provided in the Faculty vote, in courses open to Freshmen. There will be in the Department of Government an equally complete cessation of tutorial conferences.

Although individual instructors may experiment with section meetings or conferences if they so desire, the consensus of opinion of members of the department indicates that no such experiments are thought necessary for the first reading period. The tutors in the Department will probably not keep any appointments during this period except to have at least one of their number available during specified office hours to handle routine questions of admin- istration or exceptional and unforeseen problems connected with the reading assignments.

Doubtless a number of students will feel somewhat lost the first time that the sustaining hand of supervision is with drawn. But if university men, particularly the upper classmen most affected, cannot use a two or three week period of reading to advantage after the subjects have been opened up to them by lectures or by tutorial conferences, there is manifestly something stultifying in our former methods of instruction. The faults that will be shown by experience to come through the use of the reading period will quite possibly be those of a too elaborate effort on the part of instructors to make sure that the student is kept busy. The reading assignments are apt to be made merely an extension of course control, and to be made too heavy to permit the honest performance of the required task. Two weeks and a half might profitably be spent in milling over the courses, in pulling them together, in completing the terminal essays--to say nothing of the tutorial assignments for the period. In order to make the transition gradual, however, strict course assignments are no doubt necessary.

The Department of Government has generally accepted as a working formula, therefore, the addition of about a third to the ordinary course assignments, or perhaps a half in cases where the readings assigned are of a somewhat lighter nature than those ordinarily given. Lists of the books required for especially heavy use, have been restricted as much as possible to whole volumes. These lists and the assignments have been prepared in the way which is suggested by the Library Committee and by the Committee on Instructions, and which Dean Hanford has clearly outlined in his general exposition of the plan.

Instead of trying to telescope material into the fewer lectures possible under this plan, most of the instructors have indicated their preference for leaving certain portions of the courses in which interpretation is possibly less vital than in others to the students themselves, aided only by the assigned readings.

On the whole it seems to be the consensus of opinion in the Department that, whatever the necessary fumbling of the first transitional experiments, the reading period should offer to students as well as to instructors and tutors a useful change of emphasis in their relations. Instead of being urged and harried into thinking by endless supervision, the student is offered the possibility of a period in which he may, indeed he must, interpret some problems for himself with only the aid that an introduction by lectures and tutors has afforded him.

Professor J. L. Cooiidge, '95, chairman of the Mathematics department, yesterday outlined to a Crimson reporter the effect which the Reading Period will have upon the schedule of the Mathematics department. These plans are set forth in the following article.

With the exception of three graduate courses in Mathematics, Mathematics 8, 10, and 26 in which lectures will be discontinued, the Reading Period will not effect the regular conduct of courses in the Mathematics department. In the three graduate courses in which the Reading Period will take effect, the students may have access to their tutors, but only when unable to continue their work without explanation of some difficult point. Outside problems will be assigned, with suggestions of suitable books to read as an aid to their solution.

This handling of the Reading Period in the Mathematics department is due to two features of mathematical work which do not occur in other departments. First, students have not been trained either in preparatory school or college to carry on independent mathematical study, and second, the professors are the tutors in the Mathematics department.

While most subjects may be read and understood at least in part, so that any student is able to carry on independent study, mathematics is a subject in which the failure to understand one point may make further progress imposible. For this reason even the graduate students to whom the privileges of the Reading Period will be extended may have access to their tutors when unable to grasp a point which is essential to a continuance of their work.

The Mathematics department does not feel that it would be safe to dissolve section meetings and lectures for students of undergraduate standing, and is therefore experimenting with the Reading Period method in graduate courses. On the results of this experiment, the extension of the plan to other courses in Mathematics during the second half-year will be based