MOLIERE MOLE8

The great decrease in the number of men taking the language examinations like the corresponding increase in enrollment in the elementary courses in French and German mirrors in good part another submission to curricular machinery. Advised by elders and frightened by reports of the difficulty of the examinations entrance are coming more and more to take courses which guarantee the passing of the requirements instead of attempting the discipline of soil preparation: When the student knows nothing of a language elementary training is desirable. But a course that has no end but the sight transition of some two hundred words virtually wastes a quarter of curricular year.

The courses that fill this need are necessary tedious. The classics are tasted but any attention to literary values must wait on the stumbling paraphrases of the classroom. Better known than these slightly musty process are the writers increasingly read in this country men like Proust and Hampton and Thomas Mann. With the expenditure of some labor elementary knowledge does not preclude the enjoyment of these writers. And well disciplined intelligent individual study in line with all modern tendencies promises more of permanence and adhered to yields as much at the moment as grammatical boredom.

It is a pardonable weakness that makes the symbol of a degree still count for more in the mind of the student than the petty wastes that may make it up. Since safety must remain a prime consideration when one seeks such ultimates it seems possible for Harvard to recognize that. a) The courses in French and German which fulfill the reading requirement are now taken by the majority for that purpose alone. b) The present mechanical nature of their value might be forfeitable altered by a reshaping of each course either to a rough reading outline of the nation's literature or to a reading survey of the brighter contemporaries.