FACULTY BENEFITS BY NEW RESPITE

The following is a partial reprinting of an article by Professor H. E. Yeomans '00 in the current number of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. Professor Yeomans' views upon the pre-examination subject are of particular interest as illuminating the subject from the Faculty point of view.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has sanctioned what may prove to be the most noteworthy development in the college since the general examinations and tutorial instruction were introduced. The amount of teaching is to be cut down.

Two main considerations moved the Faculty to its decision. It believes that the teaching staff has too much to do and that the students will profit by less instruction and more independent study.

In his opportunity to study and write the American professor today is at a disadvantage as compared with his European colleague. If he conducts a course his class meetings are more frequent. Whether he lectures or tutors, his academic year runs to something like nine months, while in Europe it is six or seven. Our college year is too firmly fixed to be curtailed; and few would desired to shorten it if the change meant that the college plant and the college students would be unused and idle longer than they are now. If our teachers are to do their share in the advancement of learning, relief must be sought within the limits of the present calendar.

No member of the Faculty would be willing to seek such relief at the expense of the students. The overwhelming majority feel that a plan has been devised which, with careful administration, will benefit the students.

For decades the one essential problem of the American college has been to induce its students to take their college work seriously. These students are not children. They are no younger than men who led the advance through the Argonne and other men who took their ships round the Horn. If they can be made to appreciate the importance of intellectual training they will take it seriously enough. The only way to make young men feel the importance is to accept and act upon the principle that they are partners, and the more important partners, in the educational endeavor. This we have not done. We have confused instruction with education. We have not seen clearly that nobody can educate anybody else. The faculty can only direct and supervise and maintain the standard; the student must educate himself.

Self-education demands freedom and responsibility. President Eliot understood this and was striving toward freedom and responsibility when he brought in the elective system. He was adopting university methods. In the same spirit we have added the concentration requirements, the general examinations, and tutoring. Now we propose to take another step in the same direction and enlarge the students' opportunity and responsibility for work by themselves.

There is serious danger in the new plan. It is of no value unless it relieves instructors and throws students on their own resources. Wherever the change is adopted it must be adopted thoroughly. Tutors, especially, and instructors of graduate students will have to resist the temptation to give their men just a little teaching during the reading periods. For the students there will be risks that always go with opportunity and responsibility. Some will be lost who might conceivably be compelled to straggle along. Some will look upon the reading period as a holiday; others will regard it as a cramming period in which to make good earlier neglect. But the great majority will welcome "time for consecutive reading and for other large tasks, free from interruption by a schedule that breaks up" their "work into small unrelated units." In short, they will welcome a greater freedom because it will permit and demand greater self-reliance.

A grave task lies before the Faculty. Unless the proposed change is inaugurated with caution, forethought minute attention, and rigid determination to exact the responsibility that goes with freedom, it will either accomplish nothing or will wreck more students than we can afford to lose. Advisers, assistants, course instructors, examiners, and "the Office," all must put their shoulders to the wheel. Our main reliance is upon the tutors. Without them the plan would never have been suggested and without their hearty cooperation it cannot succeed. Their intimate personal relationship with their students will count for more than any other safeguard. The work of assistants must continue to improve. The technique of course lecturing and examination will have to be overhauled and adjusted and readjusted. General examiners must cudgel their brains and harden their hearts. The relief to the teaching force, though it should ultimately be very great, may for a time be considered smaller than is generally expected