CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE

English 79

Types of English Literature

Although this course has received considerable notoriety as a football player's course, the serious minded student not concentrating in English will find it of considerable value. Professor Rollins, who will confine himself to the half year on prose in 1934-35, gives an immense wealth of material and detail in rather prosy style. The reading is rather long, but not prohibitively so, and by judicious selection the student can save himself a lot of plowing.

Next year the first half year dealing with the types of English poetry will be given by Frederick G. White '19, who last year made the prose forms interesting.

Fine Arts 1

History of Art

The desperate struggle to encompass the Fine Arts in three short lectures every week for nine months brings forth an almost healthy baby. The facts which he has learned about, painting, sculpture, and architecture, make him amazingly precocious; he always impresses suitably his father's friends. But like most babies he is unable to sort out the facts which he has garnered and allot them their proper rank Possibly he is a bit superficial.

This criticism, launched against Fine Arts for some time now still remains true although it has lost some of its freshness. It is counter-balanced by the difficulties of suggesting a remedy for the malady. Fortunately, in Dean Edgell, Fine Arts has one of the few men who could make such a course interesting. His lectures, even at this break-neck speed, are invariably interesting. The ordinary man at the end of the year does feel that he has learned something.

It might be possible to spend more time studying a period of architecture by examining one example of it than many. The stories concerning its construction and the developments as represented in this one building might make the period hold more significance for the student. But even now Fine Arts 1 is profitable for the man who wants to learn a few facts about the subject. The bi-weekly tests, which examine the reading and knowledge of the slides, are of medium difficulty and easily handled.

Mathematics 2

Differential and Integral Calculus

For those who have survived Math A and are gluttons for punishment, Math 2 will fill the bill to a nicety. There is little that can be said about Math A that does not apply with equal force to Math 2 and for the student who has managed to pass the elementary course without too much trouble, the more advanced should have no especial terrors. The latter is intensive rather than extensive and therefore partakes less of the characteristics of a survey course.

The first semester, which may be counted as a half course if taken with a grade of C or better, continues the work of integration in Osgood where the Freshman left off, and concludes with a rather thorough investigation of infinite series; the latter will prove extremely boring to any but the mathematics fanatic, though offering a breathing spell after the rigors of definite integrals. The second term includes a month of Solid Analytic to prepare the student for the mysteries of partial differentiation.

Sociology A

Principles of Sociology

This course might more properly be called a philosophy of history, for it attempts to study the progress of the human race in all its totality and interpret from this the hows and whys of social metabolism. By means of the various theories of the structure and change of society, it causes the student to think and thereby fulfills the elemental requirement for any college course.

The lectures are given twice a week by Professor Pitirim A. Sorokin, and while they are by no means brilliant, Professor Sorokin's foreign accent and eccentric idiosyncrasies often make them both absorbing and amusing. The fact that Professor Sorokin appears to be a real scholar also adds interest. To the student who has no liking for philosophy, or for ideas connoted by such phrases as "intergroup antagonisms, tensions, conflicts," "artistic mentality of a people," "social stratification," unconscious social control," and so forth ad infinitum, the course, and especially the lectures, will be a frightful bore.