HARVARD NOT DOING ITS PART, GREENOUGH

Is Harvard doing as well as it should by its Freshmen?" is the question which is asked and answered by Dean C. N. Greenough '98 in an article appearing in the current issue of the Alumni Bulletin.

This question has been much emphasized Dean Greenough explains, ever since the increased requirements for Freshmen went into effect a year ago, with disastrous results for many members of last year's Freshman class. Parrots school masters, and others have been calling to the attention of the college office a number of unfavorable conditions which affect Freshmen at Harvard in their work.

College Not Alone to Blame

In his article, Dean Greenough divides the blame for what he admits is a bad situation equally among the arent, the college, the school teacher, and the student himself, but places especial emphasis upon the failure of the college to give the Freshman the proper start during the early part of his first year.

"Harvard is, of course, not doing its part altogether well," he says. "But it we work together and work hard, there should be a different story in a few years."

Tells of Freshman's Troubles

In summarizing the difficulties encountered by the Freshman in his tranisition from school to college, Dean Greenough writes.

"The transition from school to college, difficult at best, will prove to be too much for the stability of many Freshmen unless arrangements are improved for bridging the gap. Instead of being taught, as they were at school, almost entirely by recitation, the Harvard Freshman is to a considerable degree taught by lectures. Instead of working in a small school library, he is expected from the very first to make at least some use of an enormous university library. Instead of being frequently tested on relatively small bits of information he is tested at considerable intervals on pretty large portions of the course. Instead of having his study hours supervised, he is told that he must take charge of himself and keep his work up regularly. Instead of being one of a small class and very well known to his instructors, he is one of a very large class and sees his instructor infrequently. Instead of being restricted and cautioned and urged and coached and befriended at close quarters by people who see him often and known him well, he meets the College largely through printed advice and all too hasty interviews, and is told to assume charge of himself and be quick about it for the college year is opening, and, if he gets a bad start, it will soon be too late to recover.

"All of this is more or less necessary, and some of it is--for a strong boy--highly salutary; but I venture to say that hardly any of the conditions surrounding our Freshmen are incapable of improvement, and some of them need very prompt and very thorough-going improvement. It is also worth pointing out that it is the graduates of the pri- vate schools who find these conditions most upsetting, and it for them that the transition from school to college is most critical

"In the first place, Freshmen cannot be expected to arrive in Cambridge on one day and on the next to start intelligently upon a stage in their education which is radically different from school. They must be got here before the rush of the opening week and given a few days of preliminary advice and information in order that they may know what is expected of them. In a rudimentary way, but with very considerable success, something of this sort was tried this fall for the first time.

"Both Faculty advisers ad student advisers are given a job which, if done as well as as it should be, is a heavy tax upon the patience and skill of the adviser and which, to the freshman, means more than most of us realize. Members of the Faculty who do not enjoy pouring out their time and advice liberally for the benefit of freshmen ought not to be freshman advisers. Those who are able and willing to advise freshmen skillfully and liberally ought to have their other work slightly reduced so that they might taken on more freshmen and at the same time give them more help.

"What is true of the adviser is, of course, true of the teacher. We ought to have more teachers for freshmen of the same general make as the best ones in preparatory schools, but with more of a reach out toward advanced scholarship. To find such people and to provide an academic future for them in a Faculty which is just as much the Faculty of the Graduate School as it is the Faculty of Harvard College is no simple problem. Furthermore, it is most undesirable that, in freshman courses which rarely, if ever, meet as a whole, the work of the sections should be conducted by assistants. The man in charge of such a section does not really assist the head of the course: he instructs the freshman: and his rank, salary, skill, and experience should, accordingly, be those of an instructor.

"As everybody knows, the so-called outside activities at a place like Harvard are numerous and attractive. Men from private schools, particularly come here, not merely with a boy's eagerness to have a liberal taste of such things after the stricter life of school, but with the emphatic exhortation of there older friends that they should be sure to do something for the College. They, accordingly, feel deeply the responsibility that the dances in Boston go off successfully, and that there are a sufficient number of candidates to manage our teams, edit our papers, and so forth. All this is good in moderation."

"And what about the parent? 'Child,' said the mother of Increase Mather, 'if thou art a good Christian and a good scholar, then art all that thy mother ever hoped for thee.' How many of the boys who now fail to meet our standard of scholarship have been led to suppose that their parents measure a boy's success in college largely by his success as a scholar? I do not know. But I do know that, no matter how hard professors and headmasters may work to replace low ideals of scholarship by high ones, our successful scholars will be, as a rule, the sons of those who themselves believe in scholarship.

"I am disposed to think that in too much of our college legislation we have drafted uniform rules for all undergraduates, with the result that upper classmen have been rather too much restricted and Freshmen not enough restricted. By the end of the Freshman year, we unquestionably must get the Freshman ready for the responsibilities of an upper classman, which, especially since the introduction of the General Examination, are probably greater at Harvard than at most colleges; but the earlier part of the Freshman year--especially the first quarter of it must attach itself educationally to the end of the school course, or we shall have no considerable diminution in a mortality which, if it be not cut down, will show that Harvard College and the schools cannot cooperate. The Harvard College side of the problem is to make the earlier part of the Freshman year a little more like the latter part of the school course. The school side of the problem is to make the latter part of the school course a little more like the Freshman year at Harvard. Given a little more time and a continuation of the present willingness of the schools and of Harvard to cooperate, and we shall see to use the figure so effectively employed by Dean Sperry in one of his recent sermons in Appleton Chapel as a bridge built out simultaneously from both banks, meeting in the middle, and replacing the present insecure means of transition from school to college.