To the Editor of the Crimson:

A few dissenting ides ought to be expressed concerning your report and editorial which dealt with Government as a field of concentration.

1. In both the report and editorial the fact is decried that the Government Department is failing to supply a "training that will be of definite value in the pursuance of an active political career". Now although there is much murkiness concerning the goal of collegiate education, only the most materialistic of utilitarians will agree that the college ought to go further in being turned into a professional training ground.

The responsibility of the Government Department to society, which the Crimson editorial emphasized, cannot be assumed to be fulfilled by shifting the focus of attention from political theory ("the art of government" according to the Crimson) to political practise. The notion that the practise of government can or ought to be studied at the cost of the least neglect to a careful consideration of the bases and objects of government, is a fallacious notion.

2. The legitimate appraisal of a department's teachers seems to me to lose much of its value when (1) the students who are called upon to give their opinion are chosen by the department itself, and (2) when some of the men who are thus selected to represent undergraduate opinion avowedly express their intention to "boost their tutor".

3. The ranking of Harvard's Government Department below those of other universities appears, in justice, to call for a closer examination of standards by which these departments are to be judged.

It is to be hoped that prospective concentrators in Government will not allow themselves, like the tutors in the department, to be much moved by the Crimson report and editorial. Melvin Levy '36