Class Enrollment Doubles In Far Eastern Languages

The number of undergraduates taking intensive Chinese and Japanese language courses has more than doubled in the past two years, Edwin O. Reischauer, Director of the Center for East Asian Studies, disclosed yesterday.

He explained that "the climate of opinion has changed in the last few years," and students have come to realize that knowing very little about the Asian population is just as dangerous as a lack of scientific knowledge.

Reischauer called Harvard "way out ahead" in the undergraduate program, since students accept a Far Eastern course as "a natural part of their studies." Political science, art, literature, and history courses have steadily increased in size during the years since World War II.

The interest that these little-known fields hold has aided this growth, he said. However, he pointed out that there is a scarcity of books, even in Far Eastern languages, dealing with these subjects. Also, competent teachers are lacking. Because of these difficulties, students are often afraid to enter what Reischauer termed a "frontier situation."

But the fact that 32 more undergraduates have enrolled in the language courses this year than in 1957 shows, he felt, that College students are "stepping beyond the point of general interest." Even sophomores are joining non-Western social science and languages courses, without having to "justify it to themselves," as they would have had to 15 years ago, Reischauer said.

He noted that the rise in language studies shows a certain optimism on the part of students interested in the foreign service. In the diplomatic corps, he pointed out, the only relation at present with Chinese speaking people is with Formosa.