6TH CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE COVERS 50 COLLEGE COURSES

With the treatment of 34 courses open to upperclassmen in today's issue the Crimson prints its third installment of its sixth annual fall Confidential Guide to Courses. The remaining advanced courses will be considered in tomorrow's issue.

The object of the Guide is to furnish students with the frank opinions of other students who have taken the courses being offered. Where no one, deemed capable of rendering a clear and unprejudiced opinion of a particular course could be found, that course has been omitted from the Guide.

In some instances a revision in the conduct of a course may have been effected without any notice being given. The Crimson cannot assume responsibility for errors arising out of such conditions and can only urge professors contemplating a change in the conduct of their courses to notify the Crimson in the future.

Biology A

This is from start to close a Freshman affair. Few upperclassmen will gain much from the pictures, microscopes, and anatomical disclosures which they did not know before. Save for Professors Shapley's cosmic wit there is no incentive to return unceasingly. The course as organized neither rises above nor falls below the average of mass instruction. It probably offers as many opportunities as, the other introductory courses in science, but no more. They all fall through the necessity of establishing a strict norm in order to grade the students as easily as possible. Therefore there is much unnecessary routine, much prep school discipline, and not a little superficiality of method.

The course opens with lectures by Dr. Shapley on the evolution of the stellar universe and then goes on to review the formation of the earth, handily brevified by Dr. Daley. Professor Ames next takes the chair to trace the botanical development of the earth's crust. This completes the first half year's work with smatterings of laboratory work on plants which despite its brief survey is still one of the best pleas for the course. Professors Woodcock and Wyman hold the rostrum for the second half year with their explanations of zoological transformations. The practical research accompanying these lectures becomes dull and there is little of worth accomplished so varied and diversified are the natures of the experiments, which incidentally everyone knows the answers to before they start.

It is a good solution of the distribution problem to take this course, but it should be done in the Freshman year.

Chemistry 2

The elementary course in Organic Chemistry is Chemistry 2. Interesting, not too difficult, without being a snap. There is no laboratory work, since that requirement is satisfied by Chem 22, which must be taken at the same time or during the next half year. The fundamentals of Organic Chemistry are thoroughly covered, by the lectures and class room experiments, and the retentive ability of the class for this knowledge is as throughly tested in quizzes at frequent intervals. As in much Chemistry, a sufficient knowledge may be obtained by a little intensive study on the ever of such a quiz or hour exam. Chem 2 is a pleasant course, and will waste no one's time.

Comparative Literature 11

Nothing in Mr. Babbitt's course is so important as Mr. Babbitt himself. Although nominally a professor of French literature, he is really no, longer a teacher; he is the prophet of a philosophy. His philosophy, as nearly everybody knows, is called humanism. This creed has become widely popular lately; the front pages of the newspapers have advertised the worship of its more spectacular disciples. But Mr. Babbitt has his own peculiar brand of humanism, and his writings and lectures all declare its glory and publish its handiwork.

To endeavor to explain Mr. Babbitt's humanism here would be impertinent. Whoever takes his course may see for himself, if he likes. Suffice it to say that Mr. Babbitt is a preacher of proportion and the golden mean. Like the ancient Greeks, he takes as his motto: "Nothing too much". All external standards, such as religion, he throws overboard, and appeals to the wisdom of human experience as the only rule to order life. He shuns as the plague all the emotional ecstasies that break down the rigid self-discipline which is his prescription for all humanity.

Anyone may guess what happens when the acid of Mr. Babbitt's mind meets the syrup of romanticism. In the history of the romantic movement in the nineteenth century there is plenty of the emotional overtone which grates so harshly on Mr. Babbitt's ear. He goes after it with all his guns. His methods are simple. Beginning with Jean Jacques Rousseau, his arch-enemy, who he appears to believe is responsible for everything that has happened in the last century except the breaking of the halyard on Shamrock V, he makes all the romanticists ridiculous. This is very easy. Mr. Babbitt will glance around the room and say: "I see that the schooner Romance has been taken off the Delaware coast for rum-running."

You get the idea, don't you?

Most men take the course because they are led by its title to believe that they will be fed a lot of the kind of literature they love. This stuff is served to them, indeed, but so spiced with the salt and pepper of Mr. Babbitt's with that its taste is strange.

After a few weeks passed listening to the ridicule of every standard a man of college age has ever had or heard of, the student generally goes one of two ways. He many swallow Mr. Babbitt, hook, line and sinker, surrender any ideas he had of writing poetry himself some day, and become a humanist and nuisance to his friends. Of all mistakes, none is more egregious than the undergraduate humanist.

Or he may not approve of Mr. Babbitt. He may dig in and fight it out on those lines if it takes all winter. He may come to believe that Mr. Babbitt is not quite bright, and write examination papers as deliberate in perversity as he can make them. Either way, he will prosper in the course. The amateur humanists will get the gracious acknowledgements that fall to those who repeat things agreeably, and the non-conformist will find his carefully-planned papers marked with a creditable grade and a note: "Good argument. You'll get over this after a while."

It is very hard to get around Mr. Babbitt. It is impossible to annoy him. The best plan is to keep your shirt on, remembering his own counsel to moderation. There is much to learn from simply watching the workings of a mind which is facing without fear the best critical antagonism in the world today.

Economics A

The problem of how to introduce students to the subject of economics is admirably met in ec A. Of all the large survey courses in the undergraduate curriculum, ec A is perhaps the best organized and the most ably conducted.

Facts as such play a very small part in this course; it is much more a systematic method of thinking that the student must master; reasoning power, not memory, is necessary in order to understand and succeed in ec A. By this one should not understand that no work is required, that all one needs to do to get a good grade, is to go to quizzes once a month and exercise his reasoning power. Not at all; reasoning power and concentration are quite as necessary in studying the principles of economics as they are in answering questions on examinations.

The one really serious criticism of the course, in this reviewer's opinion, lies in its failure to impress upon the student that Professor Taussig's book which serves as the text book and foundation of all the work done, is not an economic bible. The general opinion of most students after taking ec A is that the last word on questions economic has been spoken, that the final truth is known and that Professor Taussig is the interpreter thereof. If they continue with the study of economics and learn that Taussig's "Principles" is only a comparatively minor product of a particular school of though, they will probably be more than a little surprised and their view of economics as a study will undergo considerable revision.

Economics 3

This is a course which will be taken sooner or later by practically all men concentrating in economics. Money, banking, and financial crises are all subjects which despite their complexity necessarily demand some consideration from all who aspire to have anything approaching a working knowledge of economics.

It may be gathered from what has been said above that (1) Economics 3 is a large course with students of all degrees of ability enrolled in it, and (2) that it deals with subjects which are far from satisfactorily solved and which are difficult even for advanced students of economics. Corrolary: Economics 3 is conducted in a very slow and deliberate fashion; it tends toward oversimplification; and the lectures remind one of one's preparatory school days in their careful topical organization and their constant repetition.

Professor Williams, however, has chosen the only practicable method of getting the subjects over and is to be congratulated on the general success of his system.

A parting word to embryonic bankers might not be out of place here. Economics 3 deals with theory almost exclusively and will be of very little assistance in getting a job as a clerk next summer.

English 7

A guide, or even prophecy regarding English 7, a half course covering the age of Pope from 1700 to 1740, is futile for a number of reasons this year. For several college generations the rambling and delightful lectures of the late Professor Hurlbut were the occasion for the gathering of Harvard's anglophiles. Then, too,