In an earlier post a shorter excerpt from Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell’s report for the academic year 1914-1915 was included along with the first set of divisional exams for History, Government and Economics from 1915. In the following extended excerpt one finds such gems as:
“…it is still possible for a student to elect six courses in the outlying parts of the field which have little connection with one another and do not form a systematic whole. This possibility is attractive to undergraduates seeking easy courses, whose object is not so much to obtain as to evade an education. Of late years, indeed, many easy courses have been made more serious, whereby the minimum work which shirkers must do for a degree has been sensibly raised, to the great benefit of the college as an educational institution, and incidentally with the result of increasing the respect for high achievement in college scholarship. As the requirements in various subjects are stiffened it is interesting to observe the flocking of students from one department to another.”
Some things apparently never change. By the way you can now add the German expression for such students, “geistiger Tiefflieger” (=intellectual low-flyers), to your working pejorative vocabulary.
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From President A. Lawrence Lowell’s report on the academic year 1914-15.
…But in fact, the single course is not, and cannot be, the true unit in education. The real unit is the student. He is the only thing in education that is an end in itself. To send him forth as nearly a perfected product as possible is the aim of instruction, and anything else, the single course, the curriculum, the discipline, the influences surrounding him, are merely means to the end, which are to be judged by the way they contribute and fit into the ultimate purpose. To treat the single course as a self-sufficient unit, complete in itself, is to run a danger of losing sight of the end in the means thereto. In no other part of the University, in the requirements for no other degree, is the course, as a unit, complete in itself. In the Law School, where the freedom of election is the greatest, many courses are required, and the rest all aim at a definite and narrowly circumscribed object, preparation for practice at the bar. In the Medical and Divinity Schools general examinations on specific fields of knowledge have been established — of which more will be said later. The same thing has always been true of the doctorate of philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and for the Master of Arts, which was formerly attained by a sufficiently high grade in any four courses, it has now been the rule for many years that the courses must form a consistent whole, approved by some department of the Faculty.
In the College the problem of making the student, instead of the course, the unit in education is more difficult than in the other parts of the University, because general education is more intangible, more vague, less capable of precise analysis and definition, than training for a profession. Nevertheless, in the College, some significant steps have been taken which tend in this direction. The first was the requirement that every student must concentrate six of his seventeen courses in some definite field, must distribute six more among the other subjects of knowledge, and must do so after consulting an instructor appointed to advise him. The exact prescriptions may not be perfect, nor in their final form. Experience may well lead to changes, but the intent is good, to develop and expand the mind of the student as an individual, as in himself the object of education. So far as the rule affects the care with which the student selects his courses, there has certainly been a gain, for there is no doubt that the requirement has made his choice more thoughtful and serious than before. The Committee on the Choice of Electives makes exceptions freely in the case of earnest students, and it is a significant fact that although the members of the Committee hold very divergent views upon the principles involved, they are almost invariably unanimous on the question of allowing an exception in any particular case.
The rule of concentration, coupled with the provision that not more than two of the six courses shall be of an elementary character, is intended to compel every man to study some subject with thoroughness, and acquire a systematic knowledge thereof. Certain departments have so arranged their sequence of courses that this result is fairly well attained; but in others where the offering is large, and the nature of the subject is not (as it is in mathematics, for example, or the physical sciences) such that a mastery of one thing is indispensable for the study of another, it is still possible for a student to elect six courses in the outlying parts of the field which have little connection with one another and do not form a systematic whole. This possibility is attractive to undergraduates seeking easy courses, whose object is not so much to obtain as to evade an education. Of late years, indeed, many easy courses have been made more serious, whereby the minimum work which shirkers must do for a degree has been sensibly raised, to the great benefit of the college as an educational institution, and incidentally with the result of increasing the respect for high achievement in college scholarship. As the requirements in various subjects are stiffened it is interesting to observe the flocking of students from one department to another.
The second step in treating the student, instead of the course, as the unit in education, was taken by the Division of History, Government, and Economics, when, and with the approval of the Faculty, it set up the requirement of a general examination at graduation for students concentrating in that division. The examination, which is entrusted to a committee representing the three departments within the division, is to be distinct from that in the courses elected, and is to include not only the ground covered in them, but also the general field with which they have dealt, and the knowledge needed to connect them. This is a marked departure from the plan of earning a degree by scoring courses; and it will take time to adjust men’s conceptions of education to a basis new to the American college, though familiar in every European university. To assist the students in preparing themselves for the general examination each of them at the beginning of his Sophomore year is assigned to the charge of a tutor who confers with him about his work and guides his reading outside of that required in the courses. As the plan could be applied only to men entering after it was established, the first examinations will be held next spring, and then only for men who graduate in three years. In the Divinity School, where the course for the Master’s and Doctor’s degrees is shorter, a general examination has already been put into operation with gratifying results.
A third step has been taken this autumn by a vote of the Faculty providing that the courses elected by a student for concentration in History and Literature must be approved by the Committee on Degrees with Distinction in that field. This has always been true of candidates for distinction under this committee, and in fact the field is one that would present little unity if the courses chosen were unrelated. But that the combination of courses by other students should require approval is an innovation which shows that in a subject where the liberty of choice is peculiarly liable to abuse, the Faculty is prepared to require a consistent programme of study, with a view to giving students an education rational as a whole. Moreover, departments and committees, which do not wish to limit the choice of the students concentrating in their field to combinations of courses approved by them beforehand, sometimes take charge of his work in the subject and really oversee it at every stage. They do in fact act as his advisers, and can often do so better than the instructor specially appointed to advise him. The adviser so appointed frequently takes a very careful interest in the development of a man’s work throughout his college course, and whenever a man shows on entering college any strong special interest, Professor Parker always tries to appoint for him an adviser who will sympathize with that interest. Nevertheless, the departments and committees which pay close attention to the choice of courses by each man concentrating in their field add much to the thoroughness of his education, and have adopted a principle that might with profit be more widely extended. It would be well if every department insisted on having a list, not merely of candidates for distinction, but of all students concentrating in its special field.
Another departure from the practice of counting by courses is the requirement that every student shall be able to read ordinary French or German at sight, and show it by doing so orally. This has proved to be a very different thing from taking and passing a course. It is a test of capacity acquired, not of tasks performed. It is in this one subject a measure of the man and of his education, not a unit of credit accumulated. Not less important is the Committee on the Use of English by Students, appointed in consequence of a request from the Board of Overseers. The investigation by that body showed that students who had done their required English composition often could not or would not express themselves creditably in their later written work. A man who cannot write his mother tongue grammatically, lucidly, and with a reasonably fair style, or who does not think it worth while to do so, is not an educated man, no matter how many courses he may have scored, or how proficient he may be in a special field. In this connection it may be noted that the supervision of the use of English applies to the Graduate School as well as to the College.
All these changes are in a direction away from the mechanical view of education which is the bane of the American system. We see that view displayed everywhere, prominently at the present day in efforts to raise the standard of pre-medical training. This is commonly expressed in terms of courses taken and credits obtained, not of knowledge acquired. If a young man has passed a course and learned little or nothing, or forgotten all he knew, he fulfils the requirement; but if he has mastered the subject in any other way, and can prove it by examination, it avails him nothing. Counting the credits scored in courses is, no doubt, the easiest way to apply a requirement, but it is not a sound system of education. What a man is, what knowledge he possesses, and what use he can make of it, is the real measure of his education. All persons who desire to improve the American system from the common school upward ought to strive not to lose sight of the end in the means, not to let the machinery divert attention from the product….
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1914-1915, pp. 8-11.
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Other related posts
Harvard College President Lowell on Instruction in Economics Department, 1917
Harvard. Report on the Tutorial System in History, Government and Economics. Burbank, 1922
Image Source: Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell from Harvard Class Album 1920.