Word: ahf
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Writing clear English perplexes students everywhere, and learning how to do it is rarely interesting. Consequently, General Education Ahf, Harvard's freshman writing course, faces the same problems as similar courses at other institutions. One more it takes on itself--the risk of being disregarded by students--for as a full-year half-course it tends to be pushed aside by freshmen. A Gen Ed essay can be written in half an hour, and many of them are. Harold C. Martin, director of General Education Ahf, concedes, "Many students do not bring the same respect to this course...
Aside from teaching exposition, Gen Ed Ahf provides two significant teaching methods as examples for the College. Fifteen to sixteen per cent of its students are enrolled in honors sections, which use only literary sources and requiremore work of the students. Freshmen in these sections usually emerge with a better impression of the course than others, and Martin believes this intellectual segregation works more effectively in a writing course than in others, for discussion in a Gen Ed Ahf section is not of great importance and therefore skimming the best students off does not hurt the others...
...Ahf's other unique practice is a sort of general education for the faculty. The staff of this course is drawnfrom all fields of study, not exclusively drawn from graduate student ranks. Only a small minority of the teachers added to next year's staff are graduate students in English, and for the first time Martin is including some men from the law school...
...disregard them will suffer unless it is exceptionally well-planned and intriguing or the student displays a remarkable degree of independence. "If you are in a system that includes grades, you commit harakiri if you try to do without them," comments Harold C. Martin, director of General Education Ahf...
...order to qualify for advanced standing a student must generally obtain advanced placement in three subjects. At present, besides being able to skip PT, the advanced standing sophomore is released from GenEd Ahf, need take only one lower level general education course, and can satisfy his degree requirements in three years...