BACHELORS' BUTTONS

The Greek and Latin requirements are a sort of vermiform appendix in the academic system, vestiges of an earlier order at Harvard in which the classics were the central point of college education. Today they are not only useless, but a serious hindrance to pursuing a rational program of study. The CRIMSON has protested against them from time to time, not because they involve work in the dead languages, but because they are utterly pointless from any angle of criticism. According to the "Rules Relating to College Studies": Candidates for the degree of S.B., in order to receive Honors (in English), must show an elementary knowledge of either Greek or Latin equivalent to what is required for candidacy for the A.B. The requirement for the A.B. degree is either a passing mark in the entrance examination in one of these subjects, or an honor grade in Latin A, or a satisfactory grade in one and a half years of Greek.

The student who is without credit in Latin or Greek but who wishes to receive the Bachelorship of Arts usually resorts to a hurried preparation for his examination during one or two summers, learning only the essentials of grammar, almost nothing of the literature, and forgetting both once he has handed in his paper. Even if he meets the requirement in regular college courses, he scarcely acquires a sufficient basis for further reading or study. Preparation in school, which the Committee on Admissions accepts so unquestioningly, does not provide classical training of any weight. Hence this part of the student's learning becomes entirely perfunctory and superficial. A college which calls itself liberal should above everything else discourage this sort of knowledge.

If the undergraduate decides that one altered letter in his degree is not worth all this extra work and all the dissipation of energy it involves, what changes must he make in his planned curriculum to align it with his non-classical background? He need make no other change at all. He may take eight courses in English and one in elementary science; that does not alter the fact that, without Latin or Greek, his badge of achievement, awarded after four years, must be in science and not in arts. Moreover, if he wants to try for honors in English he discovers that he must satisfy the classical requirement in the end anyway. Clearly the distinction between the S.B. and A.B. degrees, and the language requirement on which it is based, is today nothing but a confused and bothersome survival.