Student Council Report Points Out Reading Period Difficulties

In the June issue of the Advocate will appear the report of the committee appointed by the Student Council to consider a working plan for the reading periods adopted by vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on March 2. The reading periods involve the curtailment of actual teaching by members of the Faculty from the present 31 week period to a 25 week limit, by the cessation of lecture instruction for two and a half weeks before midyear examinations and three weeks before final examinations.

J. L. Pool '28 is chairman of the committee, which is composed of M. deW Howe '28, H. F. Schwarz '29 and C. E. Wyzanski '27. Excerpts from the report are printed below.

Consider Various Phases

Five phases of the respite are considered in the report, which deals in turn with the matter of examinations, students' work during the reading periods, competitions and extra-curricular activities, tutorial work, and absence from Cambridge of students during the respite period.

The opening paragraphs of the report commend the adoption of the plan as an opportunity for individual work on the part of students' who possess the necessary initiative, and for writing and research on the part of instructors who are now restricted by academic duties in attempting any such activity. The greater freedom afforded instructors by the adoption of the plan will, in the belief of the committee, tend in time to attract to the University teachers of the highest type.

The report in part follows:

EXAMINATIONS

"The present arrangement of the academic year in Harvard University does undoubtedly place a great deal of emphasis upon examinations. This has been one of the periodic criticisms brought against our educational system, and if this is a fault it is to be feared that the new scheme will do little, if anything, to eliminate it. Independent reading in the future is to receive greater encouragement, but the very fact that it is independent wil make it more imperative that it be very carefully examined at the end of the reading period. A professor in charge of a course should, therefore, provide that in his mid-year and final examinataions a considerable part be devoted to the work which was to be done in the period of unsupervised instruction.

"But this must not mean that the work done in the first part of each term is untouched by the examinations. There is a danger here that without a check, easy-going students may postpone the study and reading which should be done throughout the period of formal teaching, thus leaving it to be done in the reading period. A student might therefore find himself saddled in the reading period with a double amount of work: that which should have been done in conjunction with his daily lectures and classes, and that which is assigned for the reading period.

To Stress Hour Tests

"In order, therefore, to prevent postponement of work, it would perhaps be well for instructors to give important hour examinations directly before the reading periods, and perhaps a number of tests throughout their courses. Thus the student would be compelled to do the work which parallels the lectures and at the same time would be saved in the reading period from a burden of work which he could not possibly cover.

"The new plan would serve two further ends: It would discourage parrotlike repetition in examinations of facts heard in lectures, and would encourage the more able students to higher efforts. It is, of course, understood that the mid- year and final examinations would demand thorough knowledge of the work in the lecture periods.

OF THE STUDENTS' WORK IN THE READING PERIOD

"Along with the more subtle purposes for which the new remedy is designed goes the important practical one of giving the student reading of a general sort to supplement the lectures. A great real is to be said in favor of this plan. At present the lectures and the reading cover approximately the same ground, and a somewhat complete knowledge of one, combined with an incomplete knowledge of the other frequently enables a man to pass a course with a grade, for example, of C. In the future, when the student finds that lectures and reading do not actually parallel each other, he will be faced by a condition demanding closer attention to both.

"There is at present, moreover, another evil which may be corrected by the new system." The theses and reports which are of such value in advanced courses are rather apt to fall due at times when there are examinations in the offing, or when the regular reading is just getting under way. As a result the student may well find that he has a report, regular reading for courses, tutorial work, and an examination all imminent in the near future. Thus he is unable to give as much time and thought to his report as he should.

Logical Time for Reports

"With the reduction in the length of the period of formal teaching, the reading periods should become the logical time for doing some of these reports. Theses and independent work develop the same qualities in a student, and it would perhaps be better therefore, that instructors postpone the written reports until the time comes when free and independent work is in order. Similarly, in the more advanced science courses, the student could be offered liberal opportunity for laboratory problems in the reading periods. The whole of this proposition depends upon the co-operation of professors, for professors may forget that they have equally zealous collegues who are liable to overestimate the limited energy of students. In all this we see the opportunity opened to the student, to grasp a course as a whole.

COMPETITIONS AND EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

"The greatest dangers inherent in the new balance of the college year are certainly the scholastic ones. All large American universities, however, are at present replete with the highly developed extra-curricular activities. These are to some extent the product of the present system of education, whereby one's study is controlled by the college officials. In changing the old educational system at Harvard there must follow a change in the position of ex-curricular interests.

"There are in general two types of extra curricular activities; those super-