READING KNOWLEDGE OF CHINESE NOT REQUIRED

Some courses are easy and others are difficult. This is not hard to explain on impeccably logical grounds: for there are varying intricacies of subject material, and there are varying demands made by different teaching methods. But here, even as in supreme court decisions, there is a question of relativity. For when a course lies prostrate below a certain respectable minimum of simplicity, logical apologists are confounded. There is nothing to be done but to call the course a "snap."

The term "snap" has been used rather too loosely by undergraduate authorities to designate any course which requires less energy output than the average. In a more precise terminology, there is a very small and exclusive category of "snaps," which can fulfill the wildest dreams of the party-monger and the crew man. These courses can usually be detected by a survey of enrollment statistics. Thus, when six hundred percent more students suddenly find their souls stirred by the esoteric beauties of Chinese literature, there is cause for more than conjecture. And likewise there is when, within a few years, six times as many heroes discover their spirits of adventure to be aroused by the challenge of geographical exploration. Nor is the apparent explanation that Harvard men have unusually broad cultural interests and turn naturally to the extraordinary.

Some courses, such as Chinese 10, are "snaps" because they are too easy. This is fairly obvious. Others, including Geography 31, are "snaps" because they are too difficult. This paradox resolves when it is understood that the examination questions (in, e.g. geography) are too complex to be answered by anyone short of a Van Loon. The professor, gazing sympathetically from his Olympia, recognizes this by giving generously of A's and B's.

In either case, "snap" courses are an insult to the intelligence of those taking them, and more generally to the undergraduate body as a whole. Quantitatively, this is a tiny problem, an unimportant abuse. But in principle, it means that credits can be procured where they are not deserved, by the mere beckoning of an eyebrow. Thus, "snap" courses reflect upon the standards of Harvard education in general.