SECTION MEN

Dean Murdock's report in today's CRIMSON stressing the need for weeding out men who have not clearly demonstrated their worth will be welcomed by all undergraduates plagued by the problem of section men. The recent action by the English Department in dismissing several instructors seems to indicate that sweeping changes are in order, which gives rise to the hope of an improvement in personnel of the more popular courses where perhaps the burden of stuffy instruction is felt most heavily.

At present the supposition seems to be that a man having once passed through the academic mill with sufficient credit is thereby automatically entitled to become the incumbent of a swivel chair from which to dispense his accumulated lore. Too many section men regard the expounding of text-books as their highest teaching mission and make no display whatever of the originality and imagination that is supposed to be theirs by virtue of their attainments. Yet because of the distribution and concentration requirements there is no escaping them. A few undergraduates, more fortunate than the rest, are aware of the heights which an occasional section man attains; the majority are only too well aware of the depths which they usually plumb.

If such courses as Government 1 and English A are to be made really worth while for the majority, the weak men must be weeded from the sections and replaced as far as possible with unemployed men of proven worth. If this seems too much of a revolution among the ranks of the lowly section man in the estimation of University Hall a second alternative, that of assigning more students to a few of the better instructors would effect both amelioration of the students' lot and economy as well. Though discussion might be somewhat curtailed in theory, the fact is that a certain group of men normally bear the brunt of the catechism to the exclusion of the rest. Most important, however, interest in a given subject and therefore its mastery would necessarily be facilitated and the musty atmosphere which clings to so many classrooms from Boylston to New Lecture Hall would be dissipated.