The System and The Student

By giving full approval to the CEP's comprehensive advanced standing plan, the Faculty has acted with surprising speed. Although some individual points re only improvements of the existing system, the entire plan is the first concrete recognition by an Ivy university that the process of education must be as flexible as possible.

Probably the most significant feature of the program is its emphasis on the superior student. American education has long been criticized for deliberately coddling the average student while his brighter or more experienced fellow marks time repeating work previously done. The new advanced placement system should end much of this repetition. A student will be able to proceed as rapidly as he is able, omitting any elementary course which examinations show to be beneath his abilities.

Course reduction on Special standing, newly set up to administer the program, will be responsible for keeping the plan centered on individual qualification. Yesterday's proposals were purposely vague; the Committee is given sweeping power to map out details. The first years will necessarily be marked by the slow progress of trial and error. But consideration of the individual should never give way to a set of blanker criteria for advanced placement or course reduction. In every case, final decisions should be made on a personal basis, not on test scores.

Careful individual screening is particularly important in cases where the student by-passes either the freshman year in the College or the senior year in secondary school. Although some students might only waste their time in the last year of school and thus deserve early admission to Harvard, most would lose valuable experience by having their undergraduate education pared from four years to three. Only in a few isolated cases is a student's background so broad that the freshman year will be of no value. This is especially true under the new placement system.

The Committee on Special Standing is also empowered to work with the General Education committee, to alter the present G.E. program to fit the needs of the superior student who has covered the ground in the elementary courses. As we have said before, many existing courses given by the various University departments can be included on a list for advanced work in G.E.

The Faculty did will to pass the new program intact, giving the new committee wide room in which to work. Many aspects of the plan are obviously good. But the entire question of a three-year degree can only be settled after careful, and highly individualized, experiment.