Basic Criticism

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Will you permit a person who has recently looked in upon Harvard's processes in classrooms to make a comment which may apply just as well to any college.

A certain course is selected by a student in let us say, the English department, perhaps the Old Testament, because he feels the need of the background for any adequate appreciation of English literature. Or it may be something in the Arts or History department.

The lectures are stimulating and he is very happy and feels himself growing in the way he hoped he might when he entered. He has that peculiar joy of knowing that he is in the right place.

He works hard also with the knowledge that he will be called upon to express himself on the subject in examination, but has no doubt of his ability to do so because he feels that he understands its significance and the structure and principal details of the pattern.

The examination paper arrives in due time and he finds himself before a set of questions that, in his mind, are so meticulous, so imbedded in the obscure parts of the subject., that they are suitable only for one who has had time to go deeply in and get a "worm's-eye view." He has had no time, with the best will in the world, to do this and it would be inadvisable even if he had time.

The result may easily be a very low mark and the course ends in a sense of weariness and disappointment. A course that should be an exhilirating experience for mind and spirit is reduced to a bitter one by the stupidity of some tutorial person who makes out the questions--who cannot understand that he is dealing with a growing organism which needs light and air and not dust and ashes.

It is a very excellent method for eliminating students who are not as limited as the question-maker in their reaction to a generous subject. To produce failures by this process is to put a great indignity upon youth and start some very unnecessary and unfortunate revulsion's which will impair his strength in vital places and rob him of the whole value of what might have been highly nutritive. And there are enough specialists--people of linear dimension. Colleges should produce these only incidentally, and make more three dimensional people out of its pupils.

For it is these people who will keep civilization from rotting due to specialization and the efficiency expert.

(Name withheld by request.)