THE SECOND READING PERIOD

The unpretentious arrival of the second Reading Period, unheralded by the journalistic pomp and circumstance that greted its predecessor, has given in May the dignity of an accepted innovation to what was in January an educational experiment. But the Reading Period has not yet completed its own justification as a fixture in the Harvard curriculum. The increase in honor grades of two percent, the increase of one percent in satisfactory grades, and the decrese of three percent in grades below the level of C would offer insufficient space for the seal of official approval, even if grades were to be considered the ultimate test of intellectual accomplishment. Of more significance was the increased demand for books at the Coop and in the Library, especially in the latter, where the delivery desk did twice as much work as during the same period last year.

This will be a more important Reading Period in at least one way. The chances that startling confirmatory evidence, dwarfing that of last February, will be offered are slim. But the mechanics of the Reading Period are in greatly improved condition. Reading lists that were delayed in appearance, some of them almost into the Period itself, this spring have been put in the hands of the student in good season. And the lists are less indicative of either of two extreme evaluations of the student's capacity for reading than were their Yuletide issues.

One of the Reading Period's agenda, and seemingly only one, remains a theme of speculation: the suspension of tutorial conferences. Although any characteristic attitude is as rare among tutors as it is among students in Harvard College, there has been in both groups a slight but perceptible diminishment in the belief that such segregation would give completely mutual benefit.

President Lowell has spoken of self-education as the ideal toward which teaching itself should strive, but the Reading Period is in itself such a determined step in that direction that it is questionable whether the student should be completely deprived of tutorial guidance. The possibilities for research and creative work in the time thus made available to the tutor are without doubt great, and honor would be presumed, on the basis of past accomplishment, to be won during them for the University. But if the tutorial system is to continue serving alike the dropped Freshman and the first group Sophomore, it seems clear that it should not abandon the academically lesser of these, nor the many who have by varying margins escaped his fate, in their time of most need.

The Reading Period of May alone will deprive the student of from two to four tutorial conferences. Compression of his work during the half year is forced upon the tutor, and filling of chinks in the field of concentration is thereby hastened. In some cases, as that of the Juniors who will in mid-October take the Bible. Shakespeare and ancient author examinations, the assistance of the tutor at the most critical period of the student's college career is clearly impaired.

The fanfare of December and the blazon of February have both died. The most that can be expected of the second Reading Period is that it should render to its authors results of equal conclusiveness with those of the first Reading Period. Statistics are not the most strong exidence in its favor. Perhaps the most definite mark of its firm establishment is present in the least definite phenomenon at Harvard--student opinion. Perhaps it was in Cambridge first, as now, that silence in matters of great moment became known as token of assent.