The Great Anachronism

It's been so long that most people have forgotten, but there was a time, before the war, when undergraduates weren't required to take hour exams. Only freshmen had to take them, on the theory that they couldn't be expected to know what a Harvard exam was like and that they'd better have some practice before those big mid-year exams in January came up for the first time. With the war, it was necessary to set up hour exams at the end of the sixth and tenth weeks for all students in the College, inasmuch as the greeting cards from the President seemed to have a singular impatience at waiting until final exams rolled around and it was therefore necessary to have some basis for giving students credit for course they were unable to complete.

This system prevailed until he Faculty meeting of January 29, 1949, a meeting already memorable in students' minds for its emasculation of the tutorial system, when it was voted to set up what has come to be known as the seven weeks' rule. This rule, which is in effect today, requires that all undergraduates taking regular undergraduate courses must be tested and given a mid-term mark before the end of the seventh week of every term. Although in some cases a paper may count as the seven weeks' grade in the over whelming majority of instances the mark is based on the results of an hour exam. The rule was established because the Faculty felt that veterans returning to Harvard were naturally out of the practice of taking exams; in view of the emphasis the graduate schools were placing on paper grades it would be unfair to make the returning student stand or fall on the first set of college exams he had faced in from three to five years. Another factor was the student who had never been to Harvard before, who because of war credits of one kind or another was entering as a full-fledged sophomore or junior. Without the training in the sort of work Harvard expects on exams afforded by the freshman year, such students might well fail courses whose material they knew, but whose exam techniques they did not.

But however powerful the reasons for the crucial Faculty decision, it cannot be denied that the situation for which the seven weeks' rule was established no longer exists. As Mr. Bender's report conclusively shows, the influx of veterans into the College has now been reduced to a trickle. It can therefore be flatly slated that the overwhelming percentage of veterans who are now at Harvard have been in the College sufficiently long to discover what is expected of them on examinations. With the initial need for hour exams removed, they are now discovered to be the source of a good deal of confusion and frustration for both student and Faculty. Mention of Mr. Bender's report recalls his concern with the inordinate emphasis many undergraduates have been placing on exams and on paper grades. Certainly such a concern may be deemed paradoxical when viewed in the light of the College's continued insistence on hour examinations for all undergraduates. The deteriorative influence of such exams on the undergraduate psychology is further compounded by the fact that students, minus the leeway of a reading period in which to review, find themselves, by and large, getting lower marks on hour exams than on finals, thus lowering their course grades.

The seven weeks' rule is also completely unsatisfactory from the standpoint of many members of the Faculty. In advanced courses, hour exams are often totally unsuited to the nature of the plan of study, with the result that they form an artificial and thoroughly unfair method of measuring student ability. Tutors find that their tutees have to abandon tutorial work for a period of a week or more in order to prepare for hour exams. And finally, many members of the Faculty, working within the constrictions of the war-shortened semester, find that the necessity for giving hour exams further reduces their lecture time, as well as burdening either themselves or their assistants with myriad and superfluous blue books to grade.

By sheer inertia, the College has permitted the seven weeks' hurdle to carry over into a term in which it has manifestly become a nuisance. What is inertia now may become habit by fall--examinations are an historic vice of administration offices. At its next meeting, the Faculty should vote to abolish the seven weeks' rule.