The Start of Harvard Education

"When any Schollar is able to Read Tully or such like classical Latin Authours ex tempore, and make and speake true Latin in verse and prose suo (ut aiunt) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigmes of Nounes and verbes in the Greeke toungue, then may hee bee admitted into the College. . . ."

On June 28, 1703, Judge Sewall and his son Joseph drove from Charlestown to Cambridge, where the young scholar was to be examined for admission to the College.

Joseph and other sub-freshmen were examined orally by Tutor Remington and assigned a passage from the Aeneid, on which they had one week to write a theme. A week later, Vice-President Willard found Joseph's paper acceptable and admitted him, saying to the Judge, "Your Son is now one of us, and he is wellcom."

Harvard College in Joseph Sewall's day had changed little since the presidency of Henry Dunster. In 1643, the authors of New England's First Fruits had written: "One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."

"The Great End"

Eighteen years after Sewall had entered Harvard, the resident fellows echoed that statement: "Now the great End for which the College was founded, was a Learned, and pious Education of youth, their Instruction in Languages, Arts, and Sciences, and having their minds and manners form'd aright."

While the education of ministers was the College's immediate concern, the advancement and perpetuation of learning remained its ultimate goal. Colonial scholars regarded the English universities as a prototype to be emulated in all respects, and their standards for a liberal education became Harvard's standards for educating New England youth.

Until Eliot became president in 1869, the class, analogous to grades or forms in secondary school, was the unit of instruction. Each class took prescribed courses, and the President and tutors determined the curriculum.

Early Courses

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the first three academic years were devoted to studying Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In addition, freshmen studied arithmetic; sophomores, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; juniors, natural science; and seniors, ethics and philosophy. Oratory and some history were taught all classes, and the textbooks were written in either Latin or Greek.

Science then meant Aristotelian science, even though the Copernican system had been adopted by the 1660's. There were no laboratories until the eighteenth century, and the only piece of scientific apparatus the College owned until that time was a telescope presented by Governor Winthrop in 1672.

College rules required that "the Scholars shall never use their Mother-toungue except that in publike Exercises or oratory or such like, they bee called to make them in English." This rule created some communication difficulties, for the students often spoke a doggerel form of pig-Latin that was understandable only to themselves.

In 1680, two Dutch travellers had the misfortune of being exposed to this perversion. Passing near Old Harvard Hall they heard so much noise coming from the second floor that they thought a fight was in progress. Entering the building, they went upstairs, where they found "eight or ten young fellows, sitting around, smoking tobacco" in a smoke-filled room that to them looked more like a tavern than a college chamber.

The visitors attempted to speak to the students in Latin, but were unable to understand a word. They departed, believing Harvard undergraduates were illiterate.

For many years, the only instructor at the small College was the President, who taught all four classes. A few tutors were hired as enrollment increased, and the medieval tradition, that the proper teacher for undergraduates should be a recent graduate, was continued. The tutors not only taught every subject the College offered, but were also responsible for the students' intellectual, moral, and spiritual development.

Beginning of Electives

In 1755, President Eliot's elective system was foreshadowed when Hebrew became elective, but with this exception, Harvard classes followed rigorously prescribed courses of study for almost two centuries. Classical studies were in time augmented by the addition of modern languages and laboratory sciences, which permitted some change in an otherwise rigid curriculum.

An early nineteenth century graduate looked back at his college days and noted that while there was much work done in philosophy and composition, "the chief labor and crowning honor of successful scholarship were in mathematics and the classics."

Mathematics was at that time studied all four years, culminating in differential calculus. Chemistry was studied in a somewhat hap-hazard manner for a small part of the senior year, while French and Spanish were regarded by students as recreations rather than studies.

Despite the rigor of their studies and the dearth of diversion in pious Boston, students still managed to exercise their time-honored right to cut classes.

Morrison notes that by 1650 students had begun to cut lectures "in order to attend the quarterly courts at Cambridge, the June fair at Watertown, and the spring election in Boston--the nearest equivalent to holidays that the Bay Colony offered."

Even Joseph Sewall, model student that he was, managed to slip home for a few days each month, giving the universal excuse of a wedding or funeral in the family, or having a "Tooth pull'd out."

Those students who remained to go to their classes discovered that recitations were merely hearings of lessons, without comment or additional instruction by the tutor. It was customary for every student to be called on to recite at each meeting, and the instructors supposedly had a system to arrange the order in which they called on their pupils.

This in turn inspired the more ingenious students to attempt to decipher the system, so only that part of the lesson they would be called upon to discuss had to be studied. Rivalry between students and tutors was keen, with victory in the long run falling equally to both sides.

Rivalry

Student-faculty rivalry of this sort increased with time. Professors and tutors were the predecessors of the University Police, and as such incurred the hostility of the students. This hostility was mutual, students and faculty considering each other natural enemies.

Andrew Peabody, a member of the Class of 1828, discussed student-faculty relations with the nostalgia that comes only when one has long ceased to be an undergraduate. "There existed between the two parties very little of kindly intercourse, and that little generally secret. If a student went unsummoned to a teacher's room, it was almost always by night. It was regarded as a high crime by his class for a student to enter a recitation room before the ringing of the bell, or to remain to ask a question of the instructor. . . ."

When Eliot became president, Harvard education underwent radical and far-reaching modifications: the elective system inaugurated; new departments created; and greater responsibility and freedom given students.

Eliot Modernism

It is from Eliot that one dates the beginning of modern education at Harvard, although there had been many innovations in educational techniques prior to his time. Many of those changes, however, were minor and were undertaken primarily to meet the needs of a steadily increasing enrollment.

Harvard's original goal, the advancement and perpetuation of learning, remained the framework within which innovation occurred, although since Eliot's administration there has been greater emphasis placed on educating responsible citizens rather than educating gentlemen.

The traditional attitude towards education was stated by Tutor Remington in his farewell address to the Class of 1707. "You know how you have spent your time; if idly, redeem the little that remains, for the eyes of your Parents are upon you; learning will be of use to you in every condition. See you carry it decently and as becometh you, without haughtiness. . . I shall rejoice at your Prosperity and Welfare."