The Bureau was founded to cope with what Perry calls "things about studying that a student has learned to take for granted on the basis of twelve years of school, but that no longer held true in college." "The way a student goes about his studying is intimately bound up with his whole system of attitudes and values, his feelings toward himself, toward teachers, parents, and work," he says.

"We became an educational clinic, therefore," Perry continues, "and students consult us on anything from a technique for studying French vocabulary to the more intimate, and perhaps more determining, hopes and apprehensions, values and choice that from the heart of academic life."

About half of the students who visit the Bureau have been sent by their tutor or dean. Most of those who come feel that the Bureau will find a formula which will get them better marks, but Perry is careful to warn that the only valid solution to an individual's problems can come from the individual himself.

The men and women who use the Bureau's services are from all rank lists, though there is naturally a slight preponderance of those who are doing unsatisfactory work. "We've had people who have three A's and a B and want help to get four A's and others who have four A's and don't want to work as hard as they do," says Perry. "Every year we have several men who graduate with magnas."

The Bureau rejects the trend followed in other colleges where so-called "guidance specialists" handle counselling work. Perry feels that experienced faculty members are best fitted to confer with students and help them find solutions to their problems.

"In the face of a burgeoning professionalism in the national movement toward more and more 'guidance,' Harvard prefers a faith in the wisdom of the regular Faculty for counseling work, Perry explains, "We think that a Faculty of outstanding men can overcome the limitations of time load and scholarly concentration and do a better job of human guidance than would a growing bureaucracy of specialists."

Bureau counseling is free, but an hour of tutoring costs three dollars. People who use either of the services usually require between three and five hours of consultation.

To Improve Reading

General student problems come to the attention of the Administration through an informal fall seminar in which tutors, advisors, and instructors in the General Education program discuss the complexities of advising. Using the method of case discussions, Perry tries to make the twenty or thirty Faculty members in the course "more perceptive and more aware of the related circumstances in a student's concern."

Besides its counseling and tutoring work, the Bureau conducts refresher classes in basic mathematics as a prerequisite for Physics I. Last fall 100 people took this course.

Perhaps the most unusual and best-known activity of the Bureau is its semi-annual reading course. Last fall two sections, meeting at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., attracted 300 men and women. Freshmen who showed deficiencies in speed or comprehension on their placement tests made up most of the class, but every spring the course draws a large number of people from the College, graduate schools, and even from the Faculty seeking to improve their reading.

Phrases on Film

The instructors in the course, Perry and Edward T. Wilcox, assistant director of the Bureau and former assistant dean of Freshmen, feel that people's assumptions about the way reading must be done play a large part in their efficiency--or lack of it--as readers. Much emphasis, therefore, is placed on questioning and evaluating these common ideas.

For example, people sometimes think that they must read everything on a page word-by-word to extract the sense, but this is sometimes an unnecessary waste and may lead to no real grasp of what the eye has covered, Wilcox explains.

The most interesting visual devices used in the class are the movies which reproduce a printed page. The words, however, appear on the screen phrase-by-phrase so that it is impossible to look back on what has been read. By increasing the speed of the projector, the instructor forces the student to read faster and widen his eye span.