Soc Rel 148

IN ITS SHORT LIFE, Social Relations 148 has raised important educational issues for Harvard, and indeed, for many American colleges. These issues spring not so much from the course's content as from its structure. They are issues which should be discussed and debated publicly, not resolved in a stop-gap fashion for this course alone.

The first issue is grades. The 148 staff does not want to give them. They feel that grades can damage the educational value of a course, and give three reasons for their belief:

* Students in sections graded for class participation often feel that they are competing for the attention and approval of the section man.

* Students will often write term papers that copy the instructor's ideology or opinions in order to please him,

* Sectionmen, when they must grade papers, look for points that justify giving an "A" or "C", (nearly any College paper that is typed, literate, and the proper length will get a "B--"), instead of examining it critically for ideas and arguments.

Anyone who has ever taken a lower level Gen Ed or departmental course in Social Science can attest to the first two points through personal experience. Any student who has gotten back a paper without a single comment save a "B" at the end can guess at the validity of the third point.

Since they cannot get grades abolished, staff members want a system "substantially separated from the student's performance in the course." This bit of euphemistic phrasing means a nonsense or random grading system: pulling grades out of a hat or giving everyone in a section the same grade. Individual sectionmen have been surreptitiously deviating from the merit grading system for years. But now the 148 sectionmen have brought the whole issue into the open.

THE SECOND ISSUE involves the academic credentials required of section leaders and, in a broader sense, the use and misuse of teaching fellows. As a rule, only teaching fellows (or others with Corporation appointments) are allowed to lead and grade sections. Since 14 of the 24 section leaders in 148 are not Harvard Arts and Sciences graduate students, they are ineligible for appointments as teaching fellows. They have, nevertheless, put more into the theory and practice of being a section leader than have any group of sectionmen before them. It would be a great service to the College if their "Teacher's Manual" were published and given wide circulation.

Their reasons for doing all this work are clear. They want the course to succeed, they are dedicated to its aims, and they've had time to prepare. Compare this to the situation of most new teaching fellows. One or two days after Graduate School registration, they attend their departmental meeting, and find out what course sections and tutorials they're scheduled to lead. They start right in teaching the next week (often for the first time in their lives), handling material they probably haven't studied since sophomore year of college. Overworked and invariably unprepared, they manage to stumble through.

Who is better suited to lead a section? The undergraduate who has no other teaching duties and who is dedicated to the course. Or the graduate student who, though he may have the best intentions, has neither time nor profound commitment.

So far no one has addressed the broader educational issues raised by the Soc Rel 148 controversy. The staff submitted a detailed description of their vision of the course to Dean Ford and the Social Relations Department last week [see page 3]. The imbroglio must now be settled by the Department, which will probably judge the course on the basis of existing regulations. This is as it should be. The broader issues involve the entire Faculty, not just the Soc Rel Department. But if the problem is settled and then dropped, the most important lesson of 148 will be lost.