Arms and The Humanist: II

No matter how hard the ROTC tugs at its intellectual bootstraps, the necessity of teaching the trade of WAR will keep it on a plane below the liberal arts. Since four of an ROTC student's seventeen required courses are of this interior type, his education is worth less than that of his civilian fellow. Harvard can better the ROTC man's education by cutting the credit he receives for his military work.

This reduction has good precedent. The Faculty Committee on Educational Policy originally recommended giving two credits for the entire program, only to have the faculty up the ante to three. As it now stands, the minimum degree requirement includes some nineteen percent of ROTC work. While a one-credit cut would only reduce this to thirteen percent, every extra course makes the degree mean more in terms of intellectual development.

Despite its original objection that two credits for four years work would discourage ROTC enrollment, the Faculty should make this cut. The program's attraction is still strong, because it not only gives an assured deferment, but also offers the bonus of a commission upon graduation. All agree that a liberal arts college has a duty to turn out leaders in times of military emergency. But it need not make military technical training--so alien to its nature--especially attractive by giving it a heaping share of academic credit. Harvard provides students the opportunity for office training; it has no duty to entice than into the program at the expense o the liberal arts.

But with this reduction comes th problem of parcelling out the remain credit. If each year's work it worth half a credit, the student when the ROTC drops after two years will find himself forced into five regular courses for one of his last two years And full credit recognition for only the last two years would hold ever more of the same danger. The best plan would give a full credit for eacl of the first two years with the provision that any student voluntarily quitting the program in either year must take an extra course.

Under this system, if the military units still want to teach their liberalized subjects, they would do well to concentrate this material in the first two years, leaving the more technical detail for the later, credit-lean years In the first place, those students dropped from the corps after two year cannot use the straight military subject matter. And if the advanced courses were just routine memorization they would require less work.

This system would do more to improve the educational lot of ROTC students than any amount of "liberalization" along military lines. The faculty should not allow martial loyal ties and pleasant memories of service days to interfere with its duty toward the aims of liberal education.