Tests Office to Study Language Provisions

The Administrative Board is getting ready to take "another hard look at the language requirement" next fall, Dean Monro said yesterday.

The Board has authorized the Office of Tests to study the impact of the present requirement on undergraduates. Students who do not score at least 560 on the College Board achievement test--about one-third of Harvard-Radcliffe undergraduates--must take and pass two full courses in a language to graduate from Harvard.

"We've heard a lot of grim stories that this rule is really destructive to the educational experience of some students," Monro said. The Office of Tests will try to find out if this is generally the case.

The results of the study will be "a main consideration" when the Administrative Board discusses the rule's future next-fall. Whatever the outcome of the study, it is unlikely the Board will recommend abolishing the rule, Monro said.

But, he said, there is a "real possibility" that it will want to make the requirement easier. At present, the only way out is a medical excuse. About only way out is a medical excuse. About 50 students in the College are exempt because University Health Service doctors have verified that they have strephosymbolia, a rare disease which makes it impossible to learn foreign languages.

Monro said he favors exempting students who have a very difficult time with languages even if the doctors find no evidence of strephosymbolia. When a student tries hard with no success, the testimony of the teacher or the senior tutor should suffice, he said.

Such a relaxation in the requirement would provide an out for an additional 25 to 50 students, Monro estimated. He thought the language departments would welcome the change.

"We want the requirement to provide students with a firm confrontation with a language, but not a destructive one," Monro explained. He said there "has been quite a switch in attitudes in the College" about the rigor with which the requirement should be observed.

The Administrative Board's consideration of the language requirement was prompted when the Harvard Policy Committee proposed last fall that an alternative route to fulfilling the requirement be established. The HPC suggested that students be allowed to take a full course in historical and descriptive linguistics and a full course in comparative literature as an option to the two full courses in a language.

The HPC plan will be considered in the Fall, but Monro indicated it did not elicit much interest from the Administrative Board.

Any recommendations which the Board should make about the language requirement must be approved by the Faculty. The last time the Faculty considered altering the requirement, in 1960, the debate was long, diverse, and completely unproductive, so much so that Dean McGeorge Bundy declared an informal moratorium on discussion of the subject.

There is still sharp disagreement among the Faculty, Monro indicated