Council Approves Sub-Group Report Asking Larger Upperclass Tutorial

The Student Council last night unanimously approved a committee report which asks that group tutorial be opened to all sophomores and juniors, and to seniors who are not candidates for honors.

The report recommends also individual tutorial for all senior candidates for honors. In both cases, the committee asks that tutorial eventually be made a part of the curriculum with course credit.

The Council's committee, headed by Donald L. M. Blackmer '52, offered these further recommendations for carrying out group tutorial:

1. Tutorial groups should not consist of more than five students.

2. Groups should not meet for more than two hours each week.

3. Tutor and tutees should be from the same House whenever possible.

4. Content of tutorial discussions should be decided within the group.

5. Essays should be an integral part of tutorial. They should be criticized for style as well as content.

6. The tutor should make periodic reports to his department about the progress of each of his tutees.

7. The tutor should perform ordinary advisory functions.

Chance to Trade Ideas

The committee examined tutorial from the students point of view, and found that its main function is to provide a chance to discuss and exchange ideas that the students ordinarily do not have in big lecture courses.

The report states: "Most lectures, especially in the large courses, confine themselves to getting across a certain number of facts or ideas. More often than not the student's role is reduced to the mechanical nothing of factual material which then gathers dust until the final examination."

"The recommendations for tutorial," the report adds, "follow from the fact that the students are capable thinking than intelligent and creative thinking than the passive lecture system offers."

All recommendations apply to the five largest fields: English, Economics, Social Relations, History and Government.

In an analysis of the five large departments, the committee found that the Government Department is the only one prepared at the present time to give tutorial to everyone. The others, particularly Social Relations, are "sorely in need of funds if five man groups are to be undertaken," the report contends.

At present, the report says, there are not enough tutors really interested in teaching.

Because of this, the report maintains that all tutors should be selected by a special tutorial personnel committee and their performances as teachers be taken "seriously into account as a criterion of promotion."

Among further suggestions are transfer of the Dean's Office functions to the Houses, lessening of impersonality and passiveness of the lecture courses, and integrating the use of papers with tutorial