LANGUAGE BLAME

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In all discussions of the language requirements at Harvard it appears to have been tacitly assumed that everyone concerned is working seriously and industriously, and that any inadequacies which exist are thus innate faults of the program itself. This is clearly not the actual case. For the Harvard man it is evidently a point of honor to balk at a language requirement simply because it is required. The genteel art of playing the pious but utterly bewildered student is brought to its highest perfection in elementary language courses. It is a useful art, for it well conceals the fact that no homework has been done.

The blame does not rest entirely on the students. Why, one might ask, do language departments insist upon sending their gentlest and least experienced members to face the unfeeling recalcitrance of the requirement class? And why, in some cases, do these teachers freely admit to their classes that, after all, this is only a requirement course and will probably be very dull for both teacher and student? After such a beginning it certainly will.

Until the teaching staff of requirement courses begins to approach its work with the enthusiasm due to the authors read, and with a willingness to goad their classes if necessary; and until the students desert their present conviction that the more completely a waste of time a requirement course is the better off they are, the actual nature of the language requirement must remain obscured in the mists of lethargy and stubbornness. Humphrey Fisher '55