Non-Honor Bright

With the final decision on non-Honors tutorial postponed until next fall, the Masters and Department heads can now attempt to resolve conflicting views into the beginnings of a creative policy. The difficulty, in this period when no one knows how the CEP proposals will work out, is in guessing whether or not a given department will use the spring qualifying exam to make honors more restrictive or more inclusive. No one can yet say how many non-Honors juniors there will be in a given field in a certain House.

But there are bound to be a certain number of academic leftovers in a House and not all of them are going to be anxious to prepare for the junior examination which would make them eligible for Honors again. In short, there are a certain number of non-Honors "types" in the College, and they are often as creative and productive members of the community as the scholars. Clearly, academic policy must include provisions for this group.

Until recently, most of the debate has centered on the question of compulsory versus voluntary non-Honors tutorial. Such discussion is somewhat unnecessary, since it ignores the fact that specialization is neither desired by nor beneficial for some students. Those who want a strictly departmental tutorial because they would like to enter the Honors program or because they want a concentrated program, should be allowed to work out their wishes with their department.

There is no sense offering further specialization to those who do not want it, however. A student who has chosen his own program of "general education" or pre-med distribution--as opposed to intense concentration--may not wish to go out of his way to read more scholarly works in his field than his department demands. If he is majoring in government, he might prefer a tutorial in which he could read and discuss "Great Books" in economics, history, sociology, or anthropology to a strictly governmental tutorial. Or, if he were taking an upper-level English course which did not offer sections, he might like to attend an English literature tutorial for a semester.

As Master Leighton has pointed out, it is in the non-Honors area that the Houses can do their most creative work. By designing a program for House members who are not qualified for or who are not interested in further specialization, the Houses could fill the gap left by the elementary General Education courses.

The ideal program would focus on the needs of the non-Honors group in the House, could be freely attended by anyone in the House interested in a particular subject, and would be organized and conducted by tutors in related fields. A "Social Sciences Tutorial," for example, would include economics tutors, government tutors, and social relations tutors. If it were good enough, it might draw a number of English and physics majors to meetings.

By fostering varied student-faculty discussion somewhere between the extremes of lecture-hall and dining room table, the Houses would perform one of the most needed functions at Harvard. Hopefully, future discussion on non-Honors tutorial will take this need into account.