ENGLISH LITERATURE FOR FRESHMEN

Perhaps the most fruitful comments that came out of the English Concentrators meeting for the Confidential Guide, aside from the general remarks about teachers who is the best and who the worst, and what are the courses that pave the smoothest way to a degree, were the observations made with regard to the two beginners' English Literature courses, English 1 and English 2. For although these two courses, both introductory to the field, lead into their material from entirely different approaches, they inevitably tend to cover the same subjects and with about the same degree of minuteness. It is felt that both courses could be brought to a higher level of efficiency by offering English 1 to students who have never had survey courses in literature in school, and by stiffening up English 2 to the capacities of Juniors and Seniors and giving it as a kind of "cram course" in the types of English literature to the men getting ready for divisionals.

Both of these suggestions have real merit. The first proposal stresses the need for proper planning of the Freshman's program, rather than any change in the course as it stands. For many Freshmen, coming out of the New England schools where English is taught as more than just a means of talking to one's neighbor in study hall and is treated as one of the fine arts, are already acquainted with much of the material with which English 1 deals. It would be more profitable for these men to dig right into the field in one of the period courses, rather than let their interest cool in reshuffling old cards. Those who would then be left in the course could take it as their first glimpse of the broad field of English Literature as a whole, or it would serve as a final survey for men going on in other departments in the College.

The suggestion to make English 2 an upperclass course springs from two sources: the feeling that many concentrators cover all the various types of literature in more detail in their upperclass studies, both in period courses and in tutorial, and the need that arises before divisionals for some course that would assimilate the mass of matter taken into one's head during three years and organize it into a unified and presentable whole. To achieve such a unification and to do away with the overlapping of two elementary courses in the first year, an advanced course in the types of English Literature should be substituted for English 2.