THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE YEAR

The decision to adopt a tutorial system in the Division of Modern Languages is the greatest achievement of the college year. It marks a tremendous advance in the conception of education and it fills many imperative needs.

The system will provide facilities for adequate preparation for the test of the general examinations. More important, it will serve to promote valuable and intelligent reading. Most important of all, perhaps, it will aid in clarifying the student's ideas by giving him a chance to express to people more interested than a bored roommate, the opinions he has formed as the result of his reading and study. In brief the system will bring to that large group concentrating in Modern Languages all the advantages now accruing to students in the other divisions that employ tutors.

The system now in use may not be as perfect as possible. Obviously it is not. But its presence is infinitely preferable to its absence, and improvements can be made any general or particular improvements, so much the better for all concerned. Some of the innovations and special characteristics may succeed, others may fail and be discarded. But in the hands of the men who were eager, keen, and forceful enough to introduce the system into this Division can be left its development.

The only criticism of the action of the Division will be that it adds one more burden to the laden undergraduate. It may increase the facilities of education, but it does nothing to decrease its mechanical difficulties. With tutorial systems and general examinations in order for a large majority of each class, it would seem that the College appreciated the undergraduate's desire to get an education. But the existence of such mechanical contrivances as enforced attendance and disciplinary hour examinations would lead one to the belief that the College still considered itself a strong armed compulsory feeder and the undergraduate an intellectual hunger-striker. Moreover the requirements for modern languages still in force prove that the Faculty still considers these languages as hurdles to be leapt--and left behind--in a cross-country race for a degree, rather than as tools to be utilized in the building of a man's mind.

If following this decision of the Division of Modern Languages could come some reforms in administration and requirements calculated to give free play to and to promote individual initiative, the chances of the undergraduate of the future to gain an education would be increased some 100 percent over what they are today. And today they have been increased some 25 percent on what they were yesterday.