HPC Suggests New Language Requirements

The Harvard-Radcliffe Policy Committee yesterday unanimously approved a plan that would let students fulfill the language requirement without taking a language.

The proposal, to be presented to Dean Ford and the Committee on Educational Policy next week, would not only affect students who have not satisfied the language requirement before entering Harvard.

Under the proposal, these students would be required to take two full courses. In the first year, they would take a study in historical and descriptive linguistics, possibly in a course offered under the General Education program. The second part of the requirement could be fulfilled with a literature course like "Classics of the Far East," the "Narrative in Oral Literature," or the "Modern Scandinavian Novel."

The HPC move came after discussion of the purposes of the language requirement this fall. The committee decided that students should become acquainted with the functions and processes of language and familiar with the literature and culture of a foreign society. And they maintain that this alternative route could be more enriching than any of the present ways of meeting Harvard's language requirement.

The HPC is "not explicitly proposing a change in the general level of language requirement -- yet," said Ronald L. Trosper '67, chairman of the Committee.

Trosper said that the proposal has a good chance of being approved by the CEP. But, he added, there is a possibility that an increase in the required score of 560 on the college board examinations might follow.

The proposal approved yesterday would have no effect on those students who have fulfilled their language requirement with college board scores before coming to Harvard -- about 85 per cent of the Radcliffe freshmen and 58 per cent of Harvard.

The Committee's plan is directed only at those students for whom the present requirement is an extreme burden. This is partly because many qualified students, feeling that the goals of language study are not served by the requirement, still "take more language courses than Harvard requires," the proposal states.