LARGE SCALE PRODUCTION

The goal towards which all educators of the modern type seem to be atriving is the development of a close relationship between the professor and the individual student. The adherents to this school of thought must have mingled feelings when they look at the statistics of some of the larger courses given in Harvard College which reveal the extent of mass production in education in its most massive aspects.

With nearly eight hundred men in English A1 and with seven hundred in History 1, most of the "professor-and-student-on-a-log" doctrine of which Mark Hopkins was wont to dream, seems to be relegated to the limbo of unattainable idealism. Yet these two courses are but collssi among a race of giants. With four other courses attracting more than five hundred men apiece, the gap between the fountain head of learning and the disciple grows immeasurably wide.

A good percentage of this mass movement towards certain fields of knowledge can be very definitely traced towards the language requirements, which stand like nearly unsurmountable barriers in the minds of a goodly proportion of the undergraduate body. The distributional courses, too, while not provocative of the same degree of unpleasantness as are the language requirements, have ensnared many an unsuspecting man in their toils.

But the situation is not devoid of hope. Even while the language requirements remain as they are, more thought given to them before entering college should do much toward reducing some of these over-weighted courses. And as concerns those taken for distribution, more independence in choosing courses, coupled with the raising of the general average of competency in the section-men, will tend somewhat to overcome the disadvantage of being a mere seat-number in the eyes of the instructor.