Students Couldn't Understand This Sentence in 1956. Can You?

Every week, The Crimson publishes a selection of articles that were printed in our pages in years past.

July 19, 1945: Howard Mumford Jones Aids POW Reorientation

While Harvard's name has been included in the list of 100 leading American colleges and universities participating in the program for reorientating the 370,000 German war prisoners now being held in 450 camps in this country, the University's part in the program, it was learned yesterday, consists only in the work of Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English.

Professor Jones, on a one year's leave of absence from the University, has prepared textbooks which will form the core of the English course for the German POWs. The book will be used not only to teach the elements of English, but likewise to further among the prisoners a better understanding of American ideals and traditions.

July 19, 1956: Senseless Sentence Stymies Sentence

One of the current pastimes of Summer School students is a game in which the participants try to determine or explain the meaning of a sentence in one of the textbooks used in education courses. No one has yet won.

July 18, 1969: Joe McCarthy Legacy Is Still Alive in Mass.

Senator Joe McCarthy is dead but his legacy lives in the form of a powerful branch of the Massachusetts State Police known as the Division of Subversive Activities.

When the Division was created in 1954, evidence was collected and used to force faculty members to resign from M.I.T., Salem State College, and Lowell Technological Institute because of their alleged Communist affiliations.

Today, college campuses in Massachusetts are attracting an increasing amount of the Division's resources.

July 17, 1979: English as Foreign Language Draws Greatest Enrollment

"English as a Foreign Language" is the most popular course at the Summer School this year, followed by Expository Writing and Chemistry S-20, "Organic Chemistry."

English S-D1, "English as Foreign Language," has 215 students for the first term. The second session, English S-D2, has 154 students. The course's enrollment has more than doubled over the past three years, Marshall R. Pihl, associate director of the Summer School, said yesterday.

Most of these English students are from Japan, Latin America and the Near East, Pihl said. He added many of them need to improve their English before entering American universities or they want to spend a summer in Boston while learning English. The drop of the dollar on international markets makes the program less expensive for foreign students, Pihl added.

—Compiled by Julie M. Zauzmer