The Summer School has had a history like Topsy. It was "nevah borned, it jest grewed." No one truly knows the birth date, no early records exist, and even the memory of first director failed in trying to recollect the first few summers of class instruction.

In spite of this cloudy past, the Harvard Summer School, the oldest in the nation, with 1960 making the 85th consecrative session. Professor Asa Gray started vacation sessions in 1872. For a six-week period, he gave special instruction in Botany, a successful experiment repeated following year by Professor Louis Agassiz. Other members of the Lawrence Scientific School--now part the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences--later offered courses in Chemistry and Geology for their private benefit. Thus the Summer School was born, quietly, unnoticed by his historians or by the outside world.

Summer education in the early years, however, bore little resemblance to the present large-scale venture. Organization was almost completely lacking. No central office directed the program until 1887 or 1888; in one of these years, the Corporation appointed a committee, headed Professor Nathaniel Shaler, to oversee the summer program.

Instructors established courses for their own financial benefit, with the University, in Shaler's words, "giving by the use of the buildings and apparatus, and thus ending its countenance to the project." The catalogue is sparse and riddled with omissions.

Chem I

Perhaps the haphazard character of these early courses explains the lack of historical records. Classes were not then unless sufficient demand existed--and with relatively little publicity and no academic credit for the courses, command and was naturally low. In 1884 and 1885, elementary chemistry was the only summer instruction offered at the University. (Thus, Chem 1, started in 1873, has the longest continuous record of any Summer School Class). 1886 to 1887, Botany, Elementary Chemistry, and Geology constituted the entire offering.

Enrollment naturally stayed at a level as low as the number of courses. Until the formation of the Corporation committee in 1887, the greatest number of students called was 98, in the summer of 1875. A few teachers in the Boston area, a few adults interested in scientific orders, and possibly one or two students ventured to Cambridge in the summer.

Two events steered the educational experiment into modern channels. Recognition by President Charles W. Eliot of the summer session's value brought the formation of the Corporation committee. A somewhat more important event came on May 5, 1891, when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences--the largest faculty in the University--voted course credit for most summer courses. Up to that time, people took courses for enjoyment or to express altruism toward Harvard professors.

A committee thus instituted centralized direction by 1888, while Faculty approval provided the impetus for an expended catalogue. Results proved immediate and gratifying. Enrollment increased from 287 in 1890 to 435 in 1891. The number of courses also climbed from 19 to 28. And if recognition by the press can be deemed a mark of success, the Summer School advanced significantly. According to the Cambridge Tribune, April 28, 1888, "No one thing more clearly marks the progressive tendency at Harvard University than the development and improvement of the summer schools. For 15 years there have been summer schools here, but only lately have they grown to be of anything like their present importance."

Bloomers, Hurdles

This effusiveness, however, might not have been fully justified by the curriculum offered. The most popular course was Physical Training. In an era of prim Victorianism and sublimated libidinal longings, the sight of such exercise aroused a certain amount of comment. The Boston Herald, in its August 9th issue of 1903, raised its staid eyebrows at some of the activities going on in Hemenway Gymnasium:

"The sight of several girls in gymnasium costume of bloomers and shirt waists taking part in a low hurdle race is not so common, even in these days, when exercise for women is generally approved, as to loose [sic] any of its novelty. And the girls do some good work, too. They take aptly to Mr. Graham's coaching and some of them acquire as good form as the men." The Herald coyly went on to point out that crowds of Cambridge men gathered each afternoon to watch the bloomer-clad girls exercise, and that two marriages of Summer School students had already taken place.

Certainly the presence of women set the Summer School poles apart from the winter session. During the regular term, for example, Radcliffe girls were not permitted to walk through the Yard without an escort. In the summer, however, more than 50 per cent of the students were women, mostly teachers from the Boston area. The number of women necessitated a genteel pattern of social mixing. In place of the current 50 cent mixers, engraved invitations were delivered to each man, graciously requesting "the pleasure of your company at Memorial Hall to meet the ladies of the Summer School."

Physical Education classes and evening sociables were not the only entertainment of the summer. Excursions to such distant points as Lexington or Concord, Charlestown, Marblehead, or the New Hampshire lakes, filled weekends and afternoons. Evening lectures were given by men such as Shaler or Harvard philosophers Josiah Royce and William James. A conference on educational techniques, precursor of the annual meeting on pedagogical problems, met periodically in the 1890's.

Fallow Minds