Economics A

Economics A, billed as a course in the "Principles of Economics", might more properly be denominated "An Introduction to Taussig". Understanding this fact, and most of the instructors take care to make it plain, the student will go into the course with eyes open and derive a great amount of benefit from it. The text book of the course is Professor Taussig's two-volume work of the same name, and no other. As a result there is a great deal of economics which the student need not know, but he must know that part of the subject contained in the book. When he finishes the course he will have a satisfying feeling of having acquired something and of having worked hard to get it. No attempt is made to amuse the students; the object is to make them think.

Economics 8

Economics 8 is indispensable to an intelligent understanding of the problems of finance. Though the early work repeats Economics A to some extent, the entire course presents a complete picture of monetary problems from the details of country banking to the principles of national finance and reparation payments. By his earnestness, his position as a high authority, and his delightful humanness, Professor Young succeeds its making enjoyable a subject which has infinite possibilities of being made dry and over-technical.

English A

An analysis of English A as it still is, which cannot be improved upon by an undergraduate, may be found in John Palmer Gavit's remarkably discerning book on "College":

"I was puzzled for a while by the radically differing attitude of the Harvard Freshmen toward English A as it used to be.

"'I don't know what it is all about,' said one. So far as I can see, I am just repeating the course in elementary English Composition which I thought I got through with in preparatory school. It bores me sick and wastes a lot of good time that I might be putting into something useful.'

"'The finest thing in the Freshman year, if not in the whole College,' said another. The instructor is on his toes with enthusiasm; every session is an inspiration. I wouldn't miss it for anything.'"

"Presently I saw that for each student the course was what the particular subordinate instructor made it. Upon him depended, so far as that course and that student were concerned, whether Harvard University was a failure or a success."

English 2

English 2 is such an ancient and honorable institution at Harvard that too much adverse criticism would be as dangerous as it was futile. Professor Kittredge's traditional method of taking up each year a very few plays of Shakespeare line by line and in scrupulous detail may be condemned by weary student theorists as overly meticulous. During the period of the course it does seem that both the instructor and his class become so preoccupied in scrutinizing misprints and emendations in quarto and follow that they have no time for the appreciation of Shakespeare. Some months after the last memory passage has been transcribed, the last three-line quotation identified, and the last "fact of Shakespeare" recorded in the June bluebook the student finds his appreciation of Shakespeare returning and all the more intelligent and acute for the detailed knowledge of Shakespeare which he acquired during the preceding year.

The course, moreover, is considerably enlivened by Professor Kittredge's delightful digressions upon liberal education, the CRIMSON, Cape Cod, and Life-in-General; the acrobatic performances of his eyeglasses; and his dramatic exits down the aisles of Harvard 5.

English 5

Since the resignation of Dean Briggs, English 5, his famous course of composition, has enjoyed the migratory fate of the proverbial buck. Originally entrusted to Professor Copeland, who with great fanfare held a preliminary competition last spring to select the personnel of his course from the throngs of undergraduates and the graduates of "Harvard, Yale, and Pomona who besieged the doors of Hollis 11 last year, the course has since been transferred to Professor Robert M. Gay of Simmons College, an instructor of no small reputation, whose textbook on composition, "Writing Through Reading," is considered as satisfactory as it is possible for a textbook on such a subject to be. Although robbed of Professor Copeland's highly diverting presence, the members of English 5 seem assured of competent instruction at the hands of his successor.