SECOND WIND

Last year Harvard Square's tutoring schools reached a peak of effectiveness in sabotaging the University's educational system. The College, through shortcomings of its own, had opened the door a crack for them, but with high-pressure business tactics they forced it wide, bursting in all their viciousness upon the Harvard scene. A year of attack could not be expected to climinate them, entrenched as they were. But today they are not the same as they used to be: two of them have closed, and most of the rest are not making as much this year as last. An yet, there they are, still boasting of the same familiar shady practices.

Canned knowledge, the spoon-feeding of the mass reviews, and the so-called educational guidance of the schools are incompatible with the aims of Harvard. The struggle of the University to free itself from this "old man of the sea" cannot be given up. Already it is written ineradicable into University policy. Dean Hanford's Annual Report contains an indictment of the schools, and the newly-established University tutoring system at least shows that the authorities are determined to act. There is much more that the University can and should do. Badly organized courses, dull lecturers, and unhelpful section men are still common. As long as they are present, students will be driven across Mass. Avenue for aid and comfort.

But never again will Harvard accept them as complacently as it used to. The Faculty has lately shown, through its consideration of the Student Council Report and the recommendation for wide area fields of concentration, that it is questioning the fundamentals of Harvard's educational process. Whatever kind of new structure is built, it must be made proof against the parasites of Harvard Square, and so must provide within the University for all legitimate tutoring needs. Attempts to do this have so far hardly had time to prove their effectiveness. But they show the way that the University must go. As for the Crimson, it will consider success achieved only when tutoring schools are completely eliminated.