DEGREES AND LANGUAGES

Three hundred years of experiment, largely at cross purposes, has left the language requirements of Harvard College a structure ready to crumble, like the Bourbon regime, at the first touch of reason. They have intruded their chaos into the distinction between bachelors of arts and bachelors of science until it amounts, essentially, to nothing more than an innocence of Latin. On the other hand, they permit the graduation each year of a large body of men without real knowledge of any language or literature save their own. The situation has come to be complicated by so many factors, obscured by so many contradictory claims, and productive of so much inconvenience and injustice, that the definition of the requirements on an integrated basis should constitute one of the first labors of the new administration.

The necessity for language requirements, in some form, is obvious enough. Intelligent study, whether in arts or in sciences, demands ready access to great quantities of material not available in English. Beyond this practical consideration is the need to widen the intellectual horizon of the student through a mastery of the thought and expression of another race. More patent, perhaps, and more often questioned is the habit of mental exactness which the study of a foreign syntax develops. The present requirements fulfill all but the last of these needs very imperfectly; the standards of knowledge are not sufficiently advanced to insure command of any foreign language either as a tool to scholarship or as an independent intellectual experience.

All candidates for the A.B. degree should be examined upon entrance for a knowledge of the grammar and literature of Latin. There are admittedly fields of study in the liberal arts where Latin is of no immediate advantage. But there are many departments, such as English and the Romance Languages, in which its importance cannot be ignored, and surely it is a handicap in none of them. More significant, however, is the value of Latin as a means to mental training in the secondary schools. No readier index exists to the quality of a secondary school preparing for a liberal arts college than the excellence of its instruction in Latin and Greek. To preserve uniformity in the admission to A.B. candidacy, the Latin reading requirement should be retained. All A.B. candidates should also be examined upon entrance for a thorough knowledge of one modern language. As a further assurance that their command of a foreign language was not a surface acquirement whose liberal end would never be achieved, they should be required to pass at Harvard, a course in the literature of the modern language which they elected.

The first result of such a change would be to include as candidates for the A.B. degree all whose concentration was in the liberal arts, with no stasis occasioned by the knowledge or ignorance of Latin. This would enhance the prestige of the S.B. degree by removing from candidacy all leftovers from the arts, and limit it to those whose concentration has been in a laboratory science. At the present time, the majority of officers in scientific departments believe that a competent knowledge of both French and German is essential to their concentration. Accordingly, candidates for the S.B. degree should be examined upon entrance for a basic reading knowledge of one of these languages, and of the other before the end of the Freshman year. In order to discourage the practice of leaving the mastery of one of these languages to the Freshman year, those taking elementary language courses under such conditions might be awarded half-credit only.

The rational classification of A.B. and S.B. candidates which this reform of the language requirements would provide is a sufficient argument for its adoption. Moreover, it would raise the efficiency of students in both fields, and minimize the disadvantages incident to hurried language instruction in college, by shifting the onus to the preparatory schools where it properly belongs. The general cultural level of the liberal arts students, certainly susceptible of improvement, would profit, and the present premium on superficial language study decline, through the additional literature requirement. The principal objection to such a reform is that it would discourage a large group of applicants hitherto acceptable. But of every reform, of every advance in standards, this must be the implication. It is the peculiar weakness of many colleges that they cannot afford to be selective. Surely it is the peculiar privilege, and the peculiar responsibility, of an institution so richly endowed as Harvard to be so.