NEW LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

The report submitted by Professor Cross's Committee on Language Requirements to the Faculty Council should be of extreme value to the student Body. The question of elementary courses in French and German has been fairly and squarely tackled, and the result shows unusual foresight into the problems confronting the average student. The Committee has recognized that what is often most needed is stress on a definite phase of elementary training, such as reading, grammar or composition. Until these fundamentals are instilled in a student, the great value of a survey course is lost. With this in mind, it has rearranged the "groundwork" courses so that every branch of this training will be given in the future, thus permitting men to develop those fields in which they feel weak and to bring their elementary training up to a common level.

In this way the survey course such as French 6 will come to mean even more than it does at present, for without the foundation of a general understanding, the cultural cream gathered in such a course will soon dribble off and be relegated to some mental attic along with other musty educational relics of bygone days. An interesting new innovation is the French and German F, described in the report as an "introduction with slides and phonograph records to the respective countries". At first smacking somewhat of the Travelogue, these two newcomers give promise of being among the most entertaining and colorful of the courses to be given.

All in all, the Committee must be congratulated on an intelligent and far-seeing program for the future. Not only have all existing skeletons been swept from the departmental closets, but their return has been made forever impossible by the inauguration of the new system of elementary education. Future Committees of this sort might do well to take the example of Professor Cross and his associates.