LIBERALIZING THE CURRICULUM

With the announcement that the number of courses required for a degree and the number of hour examinations in the individual courses are to be reduced the tutorial system finally comes into its own. Since its inception more than a decade and a half ago the student has always been forced to cater both to it and to the old ideal of education by courses which involved frequent checks and stressed purely factual knowledge. Through the years there were progressive changes, to be sure: the introduction of the Reading Period; the Junior Divisionals in History, Government, and Economics; and the more recent modifications in the English Divisionals. But the present changes constitute the first complete adjustment to the tutorial system which has been made in the entire undergraduate curriculum.

If each department follows the recommendations all the impedimenta which formerly hindered the undergraduate in his endeavor for independent work will be cleared away. The formal course requirements will, in the words of the faculty report, be reduced to a "minimum consistent with effective instruction and the maintenance of standards." This means that in his Sophomore and Junior years the student will be able to give practically continual attention to his tutorial work and in his Senior year the honors man will have practically no hindrances to doing individual and original work. The new changes have a decidedly liberalizing effect; they emphasize the growing trend at Harvard which places a premium not on the mere storing of facts but on the marshalling of facts in a logical order and treating them in a critical manner.