Looking Backward

The failure of last summer's experiment in accelerated education calls for reexamination of the alternative system, a symmetrical three term year. Military necessity may shelve the question, but, meanwhile, Harvard's future may depend upon an evaluation of the two-term Summer School.

Education last summer was closer to the high school than the college level. For the first time in Harvard history Freshmen found little need for academic adjustment, emerging higher on the rank list than upperclassmen. Telescoping courses into six weeks resulted in shortened reading lists and laboratory and lecture schedules. Intensive study at the two course rate left students with neither time nor material for the integration necessary to the success of Harvard education. Science students, particularly, found it impossible to digest the full quota of factual material usually presented, while those with long lab assignments were over-whelmed by the attempt to jam sixteen weeks' work into the five-and-one-half allotted. Short exam periods immediately following final lectures cut out all review and forced students to resort to "coffee-and-benzadrine" cramming. The impossibility of tutorial in the Summer Session removed the last vestige of Harvard's traditionally thorough training.

Even if Summer School were expanded to two seven-week semesters as the Student Council suggested, thorough coverage and integration would be out of the question. Symmetrical terms eliminate most of these disadvantages with little dislocation of the normal academic year. Three fifteen-week terms require only slight changes in the ordinary Fall and Spring Semesters. The net result would be the possibility of Summer study at the four or five course rate. Full lecture and lab schedules could be retained, and tutorial integration distributed throughout the academic year.

Contrary to general belief, the three term year would not cause a major dislocation of curriculum. All full courses are now officially divisible. Those which are sectionalized, like Math A and Ec A, can be started in every semester, while in courses like Gov 1 and Phil A the semesters can be taken in either order. Many introductory science courses are already being given in each term. The few subjects not included in these categories are those for which a Freshman can afford to wait one term.

Acceleration without education is as pointless in war as in peace. If Harvard is to continue all year round study, last summer's experimental compromise should be abandoned in favor of a system which carries the methods of Harvard instruction into the summer.