Tutoring Threatens Harvard 'Freedom'

In a lead editorial in the current issue of Harvard's oldest publication, the editors of the Advocate urge the stamping out of the tutoring schools as the only alternative to the placing of administrative restrictions on the undergraduate's traditional freedom to cut as many classes as he likes.

The causes of the tutoring school situation, according to the Advocate, are threefold: poor teaching and poor course organization; the presence of the schools as an encouragement to "average laziness"; and the presence of lazy and uninterested students.

Harvard Teaching Poor

In regard to the quality of Harvard teaching, the editorial states, "Harvard teachers--brilliant as they may be in research, letter writing, New Deal committee work, etc.--just don't seem to know much about teaching. Bliss Perry taught at Harvard; but few men have done so since then."

To prevent the schools from tempting students with notes, the Advocate recommends University copyright suits against the schools to protect lectures, as well as publishers suits to protect text book material.

"The method for removal of this third cause (the lazy student)," the editorial points out, "is the removal of the first two causes plus an enticing array of travel folders--Sun Valley, Bermuda, Ste. Agathe des Monts--sent to these mental voids."

Schools "A Threat to Liberty"

"In the tutoring school situation we see a threat to the liberty of the indi- vidual student at Harvard," the editorial concludes. "We conceive that liberty to be one of the factors which raises Harvard high above the other training grounds of the world. Let us protect that liberty."

Analyzing "The Teaching Angle" as a basic cause of the prevalence of tutoring, Paul W. Cherington '39 in an article in this same issue levels four charges at the calibre of teaching in Harvard:

1. Course material, particularly in History 1 and other survey courses, is poorly organized and presented in many instances.

2. Quite possibly "Harvard is no longer run primarily for the undergraduate, but rather than emphasis has been shifted to research, graduate schools, New Deal advisory posts, and the like."

3. The examination system is probably inadequate.

4. Present "facilities for taking care of those individual study problems that must inevitably arise in a University as large as Harvard are probably insufficient.

The article also points out that too much emphasis in making faculty promotion is placed on research, too little teaching ability