Tutorial for All II

Although professors and undergraduates alike recognize the need for closer faculty-student contact among non-honors men, agreement on the mechanics of a plan is still to come. The most recent, and perhaps the soundest, program was turned out two weeks ago by the Student Council in one of its most significant reports in recent years. A council committee, headed by Donald Blackmer, carefully went through the Bender Report and other faculty proposals, held extensive interviews with both teachers and undergraduates, and came up with a plan. The Blackmer program is briefly as follows:

General tutoring priority:

1) Individual tutorial should be offered as it is now to senior Honors candidates, with course credit if possible. This is one of the main opportunities for individual work which Harvard offers.

2) Group tutorial should be offered to all sophomores and juniors and to non-honors seniors, not for course credit. Tutorial should in time become an accepted part of the curriculum. It should not, however, be compulsory.

Mechanics of the group system:

1) These groups should not contain more than five students.

2) Eassays should be an important part of the work, and the essays should be criticized for style as well as content.

3) Content of tutorial sessions should be decided within the group. Choice of material used, however, should be guided by general department principles and should cut across individual course lines.

4) The tutor should make reports to the department about each of his tutees.

5) The groups should meet every other week for two hours.

6) If possible, the tutor and his tutees should be from the same House, but this principles should be flexible.

7) The tutor, of course, should perform the all-important advisory functions.

The Blackmer Report's priority for allocating available funds differs from the two previous faculty proposals. The Bender Report last fall suggested that the five-man limit on groups was important enough so that most individual thesis tutorial should be sacrificed to the general good. The Brinton proposals of this spring, made by an unofficial committee of representatives from the five largest departments, held that senior individual honors tutorial deserved top consideration, and if anything had to go it should be the five-man limitation of the groups. The Blackmer Report takes the middle, and expensive, view. Seniors should get individual thesis attention, it says, but the five-man limit must be kept. Honors candidates generally look forward to writing a thesis as the most important part of their academic career; and those honors seniors who need individual help should not be denied it. As for the desirability of five man groups for the rest, the Blackmer Report has this to say:

"... Group tutorial can generally be a more effective teaching method than individual. Tutors with experience in group teaching insist that it can be highly successful, especially with students of no especial academic brilliance who are often uneasy in individual tutorial meetings. . . . The teacher's job, however, increases in proportion to the size of the group. He must be able to draw out the inarticulate, restrain the more talkative, and keep the discussion within useful channels. The consensus seems to be that five is a suitable number for good group discussions."

A further reason for limiting the groups to five men is the emphasis tutorial should place on the writing of essays. In the five large departments, a man's grades are determined by term papers and essay examinations. Yet outside of a few restricted compositions courses and extracurricular work, the undergraduate has no chance to develop all-important writing skills. A student could obtain individual attention on his papers in a five man group; this would be almost impossible if three or four more men were added.

The principle of five-man group tutorial for everyone except honors seniors is fine as a general guide. But the planners of any new system must bear in mind that there are some juniors and seniors who merit individual attention, while there are others who will be comparative misfits. While funds are limited, any program should be flexible enough to drop the dullard and encourage the good student.

Two final controversial features of the Council proposals deserve consideration: tutorial content and grading. As the Blackmer Report points out, the present content of tutorial in several departments is either overspecialized or aimless. Any new program should allow tutors freedom to assign work fitting the individual interests of each group. But it should also receive broad departmental direction to insure that the work cuts across course lines.

As for grading a student's work in tutorial, many feel that this is necessary to insure that assignments are not neglected in the face of other academic pressures. While some written comment at the end of the year is undoubtedly desirable as a check on both student and tutor, we agree with the Blackmer Report that the application of letter grades to tutorial would be more harm than good.

"While tutorial should be as important as any other course in the undergraduate scale of values, this must be achieved without sacrificing the spirit of informality that characterizes good tutorial. . . . Closer personal involvement through the discussions and papers will in itself be a powerful stimulus that the graded lecture course ordinarily lacks."

Bi-weekly meetings should be at least two hours long; where possible student and tutor should be from the same House; and the tutor should be capable of advising as well as tutoring--these are all principles which everyone agrees should be carried out given adequate funds and manpower.

The Student Council's plan can became a large first step in bringing the faculty in closer contact with non-honors men in the five large departments. It deserves quick, decisive action. The problem of staffing and financing this program will be the subject of tomorrow's editorial on tutorial for all.