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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 4, No. 9. July 30, 1941

English

English

In the midst of all the crying in the wilderness for faculty and departmental reform, news of the proposed new syllabus in English comes as an encouraging relief. All four stages have been overhauled and the changes come into effect next year.

The Stage I. course will now be much more suitable for students taking English for only one year, and instead of concentrating on one particular period will include a general survey of English literature and place emphasis on style and the encouraging of intelligent criticism. Students proceeding to the advanced stages will be allowed to specialise in the set periods.

Specialisation.

As far as advanced classes are concerned, the most noteworthy feature is that long-needed reform—the reduction by about one-half of the excessive amount of Anglo-Saxon studied at Stage II. A choice is allowed at Stage III. of either a predominantly literary or linguistic course, to replace the present syllabus, only one third of which is literary. Under the new scheme a student may take honours in two language and five literary papers (instead of four language and free literary) to permit specialisation, an essential concession at the Honours stage.

And after long years, they're going. Yes, Those "set books" which always seemed suspended in a [unclear: vacuum]. They were never related to the rest of literature studies in class, and the emphasis placed on them was seldom justified. Instead they will be replaced by classical critical works related to the period of literature being studied.

These are far-reaching and enlightened reforms. The provision of a more general course at Stage I, the shifting of the emphasis from language to literature at the advanced stages, and the abolition of the old "set books" eliminate the main grievances against the old syllabus. We hope that the example of the English departments in the [unclear: four] colleges may serve as an example to the rest of the Arts faculty in need of reform to set its own house in order.

J.