PRESS

Our sister university Harvard has always enjoyed the reputation of being an institution where a gentleman could acquire an education in a gentlemanly manner. At Harvard, so the generalization runs, there is no attempt at prep-schoolish supervision of students... Suddenly this happy picture is rudely shattered for us by an announcement by the Harvard History Department that henceforth students in History 1, a large survey course, will have their lecture and reading notes subjected to periodic scrutiny...

Such a program seems to us the reductio ad absurdum of the theory that a student can be frightened into more effective studying by frequent mechanical check-ups... To impose a universal system studded with terms such as main heads, sub-heads, illustrations, etc., is a waste of time and effort.

All in all we should think that defenders of Harvard's laissez-faire educational tradition would view with alarm such a reversal of form as unannounced examinations of lecture notes. Yale, long reviled for her ten minute papers, can be accused of no such educational Inquisition. -The Yale Daily News