ESTABLISH YALE HONORS COURSES

The faculty of Yale College has voted that honor courses be established, beginning September, 1915. The purpose of these courses will be to provide the serious student with a larger opportunity for work in his chosen field; and in doing so, to bring him in closer personal contact with his instructors. But it is believed that the courses will benefit not only the men who elect them, but also the college itself. Yale as other colleges, renders her best service to the country in sending out highly trained men; accordingly the more thorough the training Yale undergraduates receive, the more effective Yale becomes. This belief is not peculiar to New Haven, for other American colleges have realized, with Yale, that they can improve their educational methods and in this conviction, honors courses are offered at Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.

For those who elect them, the honors courses will take the place of the usual major and minor courses. Normally they will occupy twelve hours of the required sixty, six hours to be taken in the Junior year, and six in the senior year. A portion of the work will be in new courses arranged exclusively for honors students. The nature of the work will differ from that in the ordinary course, in that, the student, under the direction and advice of his instructor, will be thrown upon his own initiative. The courses will therefore aim not only to acquaint a man thoroughly with his chosen subject, but to make him more self-reliant and independent in his judgments. Against American education, in general, the criticism may be brought that the students depend too much upon what is told them, upon memory rather than thought. It is necessary to recognize authority but it is also of the highest importance to discover upon what foundations any authority is based. In the small honors courses it will be possible to attempt this and to encourage students to form their own conclusions. This is especially practicable in the work for the senior year, for the student will be at liberty to choose a special field in the subject covered by his course and to spend the greater part of his six hours upon it. Both in the junior and senior years so much emphasis will be placed upon the students's individual work that in many of the honors courses counting for two and three hours, the instructor will meet the students but once or twice a week. It would, however, be a serious mistake to infer from this that the honors courses, with their small number of required classroom hours, demand less from the student than the regular courses. The very opposite is the case. The nature of the work will make greater demands upon the student's industry and ability, for to a certain extent he will be his own taskmaster. Moreover, at the end of each year, every honors student will be required to pass an examination upon the honors work of the entire year. In this examination not only will the student's knowledge be tested, but an opportunity will be given him to show that his year's work has developed his powers of judgment.