A New Lease for Private Tutoring

December 1, 1936

THE APPEARANCE OF the Student Council questionnaire officially opens the long-expected investigation into the subject of private tutoring schools. Hitherto the whole subject has been treated with a sort of hush-hush secrecy, as if the famed "cram" parlors were sacrosanct pillars of Harvard society and above the taint of investigation or suspicion. With the enrollment lists these institutions growing steadily each year and with an annual scandal involving similarity of term themes among habitues, both the University and the Council have chosen a splendid occasion to launch this new drive against what may in time become a distinct detriment and danger....

In coordinating course material, in supplying more complete notes for those students who miss or do not take notes in class, in weeding out course super-structure and getting at fundamentals, and in training students in the practical aspect of how to answer examination questions--both from the point of view of form and phraseology--private tutoring schools could and do play a very important role. It is this part that the private tutors are perhaps best fitted to fill, being in a position to give each man a maximum of personal attention.

But tutoring schools should not degenerate into "passing C" factories. They should not be expected or allowed to push the lazy, weak, or stupid through Harvard at any price. They should not put a premium on animal cunning in getting through examinations. Lastly, they should never, under any conditions, be allowed to write theses for students or to do work requiring the student's attention. These are the dangers which have brought down on the heads of the schools both criticism and apprehension, and it is the elimination of these dangers for once and for all at which the Student Council must aim....

The middle and late '30s were the days of the "gentleman's C." In 1936-1937 many students relied on private "tutoring schools" for supplemental instruction and academic assistance. The following editorial, while generally warm to the schools, highlights the dangers which they could promote if not carefully regulated. In the process, the editorial points to the often inadequate qualify of classroom instruction, as well as the sometimes shaky preparation for and weak efforts expended on academic matters by Harvard's students.