THE FRESHMAN YEAR

One of the most insistent problems of American education is that of the transition from school to college. Various methods of handling it have been tried or suggested. The Freshman year at college may be devoted entirely to transitional purposes, the secondary school methods of instruction being discarded very gradually, or, as has been proposed, the schools might educate their students up to college methods of study. Harvard may properly be said to rely on neither of these expedients; the student is confronted with thoroughly college methods at the beginning of his Freshman year and left largely to work out his own adjustment to them. While the gain in self reliance and educational maturity of this process is manifest, the difficulties involved are nevertheless great enough to prevent some Freshmen ever emerging from them at all, and to subject many others to a period of disheartening struggle.

While students who come to Harvard often find the problem of adjustment to strange conditions extremely difficult, a scarcely less numerous body, better prepared for college work, find themselves seriously disappointed in their expectations of college by the large proportion of elementary work which occupies their Freshman year. The outstanding problems of the first year at Harvard are thus of a twofold nature: the difficulty of abrupt transition for the immature or ill prepared student, and the lack of inspiration and of insight into his future work offered the more advanced student. While neither of these problems can be entirely solved on the college side alone, certain measures with regard to Freshman work might prove helpful in both.

Although advice with regard to the work of any student is narrowly limited in its beneficial possibilities, it is, none the less, a factor of some weight, especially in the Freshman year. The outstanding limitation of the present system of Faculty Advisors is their distance from the lives and needs of the average Freshman. They discharge their function of maping out study plans at the beginning of the year with admirable ability, but thereafter the relation, if any, between student and advisor is usually an artificial one. A more natural relation inevitably exists between the student and his course instructors. The Freshmen are necessarily acquainted with these instructors; the instructors moreover have a first hand knowledge of their students abilities and short comings. Whether it would be possible or desirable to constitute a board of Faculty Advisors entirely of instructors in Freshman courses need not be discussed here. What can be done is to give both instructors and students definitely to understand that the former are available and willing to discuss the academic problems of the latter. Were the instructor properly compensated for the extra burden thus placed upon him he might in some cases go farther and inquire into the causes and extent of any general deficiencies manifest in the work of his students.

Of greater value, however, than any such plan of advisors as that just outlined would be more closely supervised work during the first two months of the college year. Numerous Freshmen meet disaster in the November hour examinations, either because they do not know how to work by themselves, or because complete lack of supervision has led them to believe that no work is expected of them. A few extra tests and reports during these opening months would both enable the instructors to keep in close touch with their students, and would lessen the shock of the November hours.

On the other side of the difficulties of the Freshman year more definite measures are possible. The remodelling of a large number of Freshman courses on the History 1 plan of division according to ability would be most beneficial. Not only does this plan relieve the better men from the boredom of proceeding at the pace of the poorer, but it also provides the poorer with instruction definitely suited to their capacity.

But such course reorganization is only a partial remedy; men who enter college with a good school and entrance examination record should be strongly encouraged by their Faculty Advisors to take at least one advanced course. Not only would such a course in some instances bolster a flagging academic interest, but it would in all cases serve to tie the Freshman more closely to the Sophomore and Junior years.

Finally there is a source of unending difficulty and annoyance to Freshmen, both advanced and backward, which might largely be obviated. The present language requirements force numerous Freshmen at Harvard to take two essentially elementary language courses, while few in the class escape one such course. Whether they choose to meet these requirements through course credits or not, most students regard them as simply barriers in their college path to be surmounted by the easiest method possible. As few men consider them means toward linguistic attainment as actually learn one to say nothing of two language because of their imposition. A change to a requirement of only one language to be met through a thorough written and oral examination or by a satisfactory grade in a course as advanced as French 6 or German 2, would give the brilliant student something to absorb his attention, and the weak student an intelligible goal worthy of his efforts.