A NO. 1

Freshmen who enter Harvard by the highest seventh plan are required to take English A, for lack of any examination record of their knowledge of grammar and literature. But in common with many of their classmates, they are not greatly delighted with the course, and for many of them it is no more necessary than for those who receive the grade of 75 or better in the English College Board and are thereby exempted.

To admit such students with no further assurance of their academic ability than a transcript of their school grades implies a faith in their scholastic aptitude which is confirmed by the usual excellence of their standing in college. Although for the most part they come from schools in the West which do not directly prepare them for work in Eastern colleges, it is not too much to assume that during several years of training they have learned the fundamentals of their own language and its use. Their instruction may not have been equal to that of the preparatory schools, but if they succeeded in ranking among the superior minority of their classmates, they must have learned considerable English in the course of their education, since that is a subject which dominates almost every curriculum.

If the authorities are skeptical of this group's knowledge of the nicer points of composition and conjugation, they must admit nevertheless that a certain number of its members probably know as much about these topics as they would learn in English A. To give those who enter by this plan a brief test of the sort used in the reading examinations for foreign languages, or to permit them to drop the course in November provided they have done satisfactory work, would, then, be only just, and might avert a long and unnecessary waste of time and effort by students and instructors alike.