Outside Reading, Too

These periods, which are called "reading periods," will be given to assigned reading for laboratory work, to be done by the student without assistance from tutor or lecturer. A test of the reading will be given in the general examination. This means, as explained by Dean Moor, that there will be approximately six weeks in the academic year in which members of the three upper classes will be more or less engaged in educating themselves without help, or, it is added, hindrance from their elders. The great purpose of a college education being to train men to train themselves-a purpose which President Lowell has repeatedly stressed this method is looked upon as an aid to that end. Incidentally, it will reduce the formal teaching period to about the length of that in the English universities, and will give some relief to teachers upon whom increasing burdens have been laid by the more intensive following of the work of the individual students and by the obligation to carry on researches in their own field.

The success of the experiment will depend largely upon the attitude of the students toward freedom from ought but their own conscientious control. Other conditions mentioned are: the careful planning of the reading, in advance, by the instructors; reasonable restriction of the amount of reading and its definite relation to the courses which the student is following. The peril to the student is that he may regard this free time till the examination comes as a period of relief from work or may dawdle the greater part of it and then "cram". But most of the students are at an age when they should be ready to take responsibility with its attendant risks.

There are few people in the ordinary walks of life who have not at least six weeks of free time yearly, even if not consecutive time, to give to reading and, through extension courses and other agencies they may have suggestion and guidance in that reading. The experiment at Harvard will be watched with great interest, and not alone by those who desire college careers. Its results, if successful, may lead to the adoption of "reading periods" for self education outside of college walls. New York Times.