The next three weeks would be reading period proper. Students would have to make up their minds about courses earlier than in the past, perhaps after the first week of reading period and would do so on the basis of their observation of the lecturer, the reading lists, the synopses, an actual stab at the reading and perhaps even the Confi Guide! Students wishing to drop courses later in the year would be permitted to take make-up exams.
Reading lists would not be much shorter than the regular course reading lists since the whole purpose is to get the bulk of the reading out of the way early in the year. Only the most difficult, most analytical or philosophical texts would be held over for later in the year. This would no doubt mean that a huge amount of reading would have to be plowed through, but since the new system would not apply to Natural Science courses, to Language courses or to tutorials and since exam period stretches out the reading period anyway, it would not seem to be an impossible amount of reading.
Reading period would be a fairly hard time but its difficulty would be balanced by the fact that one probably has more energy at the beginning of the term which is quickly dissipated in the present system than at any other time. Reading period now, coming at the end of an exhausting year, is a source of pure agony. The climate too must be taken into account: spring and early summer in frigid New England is not the time for concentrated reading, February certainly is.
FINAL exams would follow. There can be no pretense that such a rushed reading of a large body of material will leave one with more than very hazy understanding of it and exams should be designed with this in mind.
The proper function of exams has been widely mis-understood. As instruments for checking up on the mechanical aspects of the educational process they are ideal. However exams cannot and should not attempt to produce creativity. The superficiality of most exam answers and the difficulty of honest grading are legendary among teaching fellows. Besides, anyone who feels that a one-hour essay written under conditions of stress can accurately plumb the depth of his or her intelligence and understanding must be in a pretty bad state.
The exam then should be designed so that anyone who has done much of the assigned reading can get a good grade. Profound searching answers you're not going to get anyway, so you might as well not ask for them. These exams should count about a third of the final grade.
The courses then would start in earnest with lectures, which could begin to make sense of the reading. The themes that interest the professor could be developed, the categories set up, the mode of apprehension crystallized, comparisons could be made, all with the confidence that a large majority of the students present would be in on the proceedings--the jigsaw puzzle lovingly reassembled before everyone's eyes!
A knowledge of the reading might even induce people to go to the lectures in the first place--just as it would be far more pleasant for the lecturer to know that his audience was responsive. Students would be expected to review the reading and meditate on its implications as the various relevant issues crop up.
The paper should be the heart of the course, as it is at the graduate level. It should be judged in general on the basis "How much better is this paper for the fact that this person took the course?" Most papers would extend the themes the professor develops in his lectures.
But this does not mean a restriction of the freedom in choice of topic, because papers that absorb the methodology or the ambience of a professor would also be indications that something of educational value has been transferred to the student during the course.
THE above proposal for reform is intended only as a basic pattern supplanting the present basic pattern. It will allow for as many variations in particular courses as the present one does.
None of the possible objections to such a system appear insurmountable.
The administrative objection to having another exam period at the end of each semester could be eased by ending classes a week early for the Humanities and Social Sciences which would be utilized for finishing papers. This would leave the classrooms empty making examination rooms available forth those courses that have an exam at the term's end. There would be no need for another reading period because Natural Science and Language courses do not have reading periods anyway, and if they were needed a professor could stop his lectures early.
The football season in the fall would not be thrown hopelessly out of joint because the pressure would not preclude Saturdays off during reading period. The biggest games would come after exams were over. Football players would be permitted to take make-up exams if they wished.
Freshmen, arriving, as they do, a week earlier, would not be intolerably hard put to adjust or to choose courses. In fact, it may not be unreasonable to expect that a dose of high-schoolish discipline early in the year before the Great Dissolution sets in may even be psychologically helpful to freshmen.
There are other minor objections but the overwhelming advantages of the proposed system, in terms of educational benefit and mental happiness, not to mention the eternal extinction of hour-exams, make it seem at least worthy of a try.