SHOP WORN

The end of the year being nigh, Economics A is about to lift its heavy hand off 734 odd persons, and the students are able to count up what they have gained and lost in the largest course in the college. Always the target of a shower of slings and arrows, the course has rarely been pricked so hard and so often as this year. The instructors are tempted to hide behind an old shield, their lack of time to give to the students due to the painful crimping of the Department budget, but a large missile marked "disorganization" cannot be thus dodged.

What the course lacks most is unity. Each instructor charges at his favorite rate of speed into the pile of books to be covered, and each stresses what seems to him to be important. The result is that students in different sections often cover different amounts of work and always get different slants on the subject. It is unfortunate that the reactions of the students vary as much as they do, depending on their luck in instructors and personnel of sections.

Often it has been suggested as a remedy that the sections follow the lead of regular lectures, much as the greyhounds race after a mechanical rabbit. Simple and more suitable to the nature of the subject is the appointment of an administrative instructor, relieved of his research quota to devote his time to standardizing the work in sections and to seeing that each week's work is related to the one before and after it. This position could be shifted among the senior instructors lest any one become stale. Professor Burbank, now overbusy could give his full time to his own course, to the Littauer School, and to the administration of the department, while a system of teaching that is at its best bizarre might become edifying.