History Dept. Offers Help For General Exams

The History Department will hold a series of eight lectures this spring in its first attempt to provide a program of preparation specifically for the general examination in History.

The lectures, which will run from February 13 to April 15, will deal with each of the eight topics that will appear on the generals.

Wallace T. MacCaffrey, chairman of the History Department, said yesterday the department faculty decided to offer the lectures after considering several possible methods of improving student preparation for the examination, including a proposal by the History curriculum committee for month-long, non-credit seminars.

MacCaffrey said the faculty rejected the seminar proposal because the department does not have enough teaching staff to conduct both seminars and tutorials.

Provisional Solution

MacCaffrey called the lecture series "a provisional solution" which may not be repeated next year.

The History Department has been studying the problem of student preparation for the general exam since seven students failed both the written and oral portions of the exam in the spring of 1973, MacCaffrey said.

Oscar Handlin, Carl H. Plorzheimer University Professor, who will give the lecture on 'Riots,' said yesterday he believes the lectures will provide preparation which will be "just as effective and less expensive" than the proposed seminars.

Donald Fleming, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, said he thinks the lectures will serve as examples of ways to pull different historical materials together under one topic. Fleming will give a lecture on 'Responses to Science and Technology.'

Handlin said he did not feel the history department has failed in the past to provide students with adequate preparation for the general exam.

Handlin also said he believed the seven students who failed the exam in 1973 did so due to their own inability rather than to any deficiency in the department's curriculum.