Vise or Verse

With all its emphasis on technical training as preparation for military service, Harvard has yet to offer the practical, specialized courses which for many students are the only road to responsible positions in the Armed Forces. Many undergraduates lack the aptitude and the time to complete more than preliminary training in physics and engineering before becoming eligible for the draft. Many of them have seen their wartime places as radio operators, technicians, mechanics, too late. Yet with basic, elementary instruction they can qualify as specialists in communication and repair. No amount of theoretical physics can teach these men their skills now; what they need are practical courses in the operation of tools and machinery, or in the transmission of Morse code and in the fundamentals of communication apparatus.

The University now offers no training of this kind. The Psychological Laboratory is sponsoring a course in Continental code; a neighboring high school presents an evening course in the repair of airplane engines. But these are not of University calibre. The former, primarily designed as a psychological experiment, gives only skeleton instruction that does not touch on the mechanics of radio. The latter is so informal that the school authorities themselves admit its value is questionable.

Perhaps the University cannot obtain the equipment for starting extensive training on its own. But the apparatus required for elementary courses in communications is negligible, and for a class in shop work the University might, as it did twenty years ago, borrow the machinery if not the staff of nearby Rindge Tech. University Hall has long argued that such practical training for a trade is incompatible with the standards of a liberal education. But the accelerating student at Harvard has no time to spend on courses that do not count for his degree. The standards of a liberal education must not be used to penalize those students who choose to prepare for military service, for they would only close on the non-scientist the last door to a technical military position.