SURVEILLANCE

When, in his first annual report, President Conant made the statement that "a satisfactory balance must be struck between teaching and research," few persons thought that this was anything more than the traditional reference to the traditional, but long-forgotten ideal of combining in one man the brilliant lecturer and the studious laboratory worker. Apparently this reference was more than a meaningless formality, for today the President has acted.

As the first step in preventing "a separation of our faculty into those who teach and those who carry on creative work," President Conant has sent out a questionnaire which asks each instructor how much time he spends with his tutees, how much on the lecture platform, and how much in the laboratory or research library.

That this is an admirable move few will deny. There is today, especially among the younger instructors whom President Conant particularly wishes to question, an unfortunate preponderance of newly-sprouted Ph.D.'s who are experts in their field, but are incapable of imparting their knowledge to the student body. The reason for this incapacity is not far to seek: each of these men has just spent several years in research work, obtaining a sufficient knowledge of his subject to take his degree; he has now become a section man, and he meets his class once, at most twice, a week for the purpose of ascertaining just how little his students may know. This is his sole experience in lecturing, his sole contact with undergraduate minds. There is little in this to encourage a man to brilliance in presentation of material. The majority of these section men either come to devote themselves completely to research work or else pass out of the picture entirely.

At the other end of the scale is the professor who delivers three brilliant lectures each week in one or two important courses. This man has done his preliminary research work. He has taken the material he has found and has discovered how to lecture on it in a way which will arouse the interest and enthusiasm of even an "indifferent" Harvard audience: Being an inspiring personality, this man is besieged by would be tutees. Duties are piled upon him. Soon he discovers that far from lacking opportunities for contacts with his students, far from falling to impart his knowledge to others, his problem is to find time for enough research work to keep abreast of new developments in his field. Especially in the case of a House master or head tutor is this true.

The problem at hand is not "to provide sufficient opportunity for productive scholarship and research work", nor to provide for brilliant, but uninstructed lecturing, but to strike that medium which combines the art of inspirational instruction with the qualities of intellectual research which have come to represent the true Harvard education.